BOSTON 


THE    PLACE    AND    THE    PEOPLE 


BY 

M.  A.   DE  WOLFE  HOWE 


ILLUSTRATED   BY    LOUIS   A.    HOLMAN 


BOSTON  COLLE^^l  XIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  I:  ^8g, 

THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

New    York   igT2 
LONDON:   MACMILLAN  &   CO.    LIMITED 


"7  6-2, 


Copyright,   1903, 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up,  electrotyped,  and  published  October,  1903. 
Reprinted  September,  1907. 


53844 


■^^'^ 


Xortoootr  ^rcgg 

S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


^ 


TO 

F.  H.  Q.  H. 

MY    BEST    HERITAGE 

FROM    THE 

CITY    OF    HER    FATHERS 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

The  volumes  of  biography  bearing  directly  upon 
Boston  history  are  many.  To  these  and  to  shorter 
memoirs  of  men  and  women  whose  lives  have  been 
identified  with  the  place,  the  author  is  chiefly  indebted 
for  whatever  flavor  of  reality  his  own  pages  have 
attained.  How  many  persons  and  events  he  has 
been  forced  to  ignore,  or  touch  but  lightly,  the 
reader  with  the  slenderest  knowledge  of  the  local 
records  will  detect.  Others  will  recognize,  as  familiar 
friends,  the  most  bountiful  sources  of  information. 
The  list  of  them  would  be  long ;  and  the  writer  must 
content  himself  with  a  special  word  of  acknowledg- 
ment to  the  text  and  references  of  the  exhaustive 
Memorial  History  of  Boston,  edited  by  Justin  Winsor, 
and  to  the  shorter  narrative,  Boston,  by  the  Hon. 
Henry  Cabot  Lodge.  Finally  to  Mr.  J.  P.  Quincy 
and  Mr.  Edwin  M.  Bacon,  for  their  valuable  com- 
ments upon  manuscript  and  proof,  a  peculiar  debt 
is  due. 

Boston,  August,  1903. 


CONTENTS 


I.  Foundation  and  Early  Years 

II.  Colonial  Boston 

III.  Provincial  Boston 

IV.  Revolutionary  Boston 
V.  From  Town  to  City 

VI.  The  Hub  and  the  Wheel 

VII.  "  The  Boston  Religion  "    . 

VIII.  The  "  Literary  Centre  " 

IX.  The  Slave  and  the  Union 

X.  Men  and  Monuments 

XI.  Water  and  Fire 

XII.  The  Modern  Inheritance 


PAGE 

I 

26 
54 

87 
123 

156 

190 
222 

250 
297 

350 
372 


THE    FANEUIL    HALL    VANK 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


John  Winthrop :   autograph,  seal,  and  portrait  by  Van  Dyck,  in 

Massachusetts  State  House  ....    Frontispiece 

Mural  Tablet,  Liberty  Tree  Block,  Washington  Street     .      Title-page 


Faneuil  Hall  Vane  ....... 

Province  House  Vane        ...... 

Seal  of  City  of  Boston,  adopted  1827 

Initial,  Original  Charter,  Massachusetts  Bay  Company    -. 

Winthrop  Cup,  First  Church  Communion  Plate 

Facsimile  of  Resolution  naming  Boston,  from  Town  Records 

Old  Corner  Bookstore       ...... 

Sir  Henry  Vane       ....... 

Autograph  of  Robert  Keayne      ..... 

Royal  Arms,  from  Council  Chamber,  Old  State  House    . 

A  Bit  of  Fort  Independence  (Castle  Island) 

Tremont  Street  and  the  Common,  about  1800 

Roger  Williams 

John  Eliot  preaching  to  the  Indians 

King  Philip's  Mark 

King  Philip's  Bowl 

Pine  Tree  Shillings 


XI 
XV 

I 

5 

8 
II 

15 
21 

25 
26 
29 

34 
39 
45 
50 
51 
52 


Xll 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Cross  captured  at  Louisburg 

From  the  Great  Seal  of  New  England 

Cotton  Mather         .... 

Samuel  Sewall's  Book-plate  (reduced) 
Old  Brick  Church    .... 

Cockerel  Church  Vane 

Mather  Byles's  Clock 

Old  South  Church,  1903 

George  Whitefield  .  .  .  . 

Original  Faneuil  Hall 

Faneuil  Hall  of  To-day     . 

Entrance  to  Governor  Shirley's  Mansion 

Stamp  Act  Stamps  .  . 

Samuel  Adams  .... 

Royal  Proclamation,  for  suppressing  Rebellion  and  Sedition 
Proposal  of  **  Loyal  Citizens"   of  Boston  to  support  General 
Howe    ...... 

Hutchinson  House  ..... 

**  Boycott"  Handbill        .... 

Francis  Rotch  .  .  .  .    -      . 

Christ  Church  ..... 

Paul  Revere   ...... 

Revolutionary  Handbill     .... 

General  Gage's  Headquarters 

Tower  on  Dorchester  Heights  (South  Boston) 

Washington  Medal  .... 

John  Hancock's  Tea-kettle  and  Money  Trunk 
Hancock  House       ..... 

Federal  Street  Theatre       .... 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Xlll 


Tontine  Crescent     . 

Boston  Athenseum   , 

Removing  Beacon  Hill      .  ♦ 

House  of  John  Phillips 

Seal  of  Boston  Marine  Society    . 

Earliest  Chart  of  Boston  Harbor 

«*  Hull's  Victory" 

The  Constitution 

Autograph  of  Captain  Robert  Gray 

Drawing  by  George  Davidson  of  Columbia  Expedition 

Drawing  by  George  Davidson  of  Columbia  Expedition 

Frederic  Tudor         .  .  .  . 

Advertisement  of  Ice  for  Sale  in  Martinique,  1806 

Autograph  Motto  of  Frederic  Tudor    . 

Sailing  o^  Britannia,  February  3,  1844 

Emblem  from  Porch  of  Trinity  Church 

Jonathan  Mayhew   .  «  .  . 

King's  Chapel  .... 

Lyman  Beecher        .  , 

WilHam  Ellery  Channing  Monument  . 

Park  Street  Church 

Lyman  Beecher' s  Church,  Bowdoin  Street 

Theodore  Parker 

First  Boston  Imprint 

Boston  Primer 

Ticknor  House,  1903 

House  of  Charles  Sumner 

House  of  W.  H.  Prescott 

Diagram  of  Saturday  Club  Dinner 


138 
142 

151 

154 
156 

157 

159 
161 
164 
165 
169 
173 
174 
175 
185 
190 
191 
197 
204 
207 
211 
214 
217 
222 
224 
232 
233 

235 
245 


XIV 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Building 
Lock  and  Key  of  Leverett  Street  Jail,  1835  . 
William  Lloyd  Garrison    ..... 

Final  Heading  of  The  Liberator 
Wendell     Phillips,     William     Lloyd     Garrison,     and     Georg 
Thompson       ...... 

Lydia  Maria  Child  ...... 

Maria  Weston  Chapman  ..... 

Wendell  Phillips ' 

Autograph  Sentence  and  Signature  of  Charles  Sumner 
Old  Court  House    ...... 

Old  State  House      ...... 

Tablet  at  Corner  of  Essex  Street  and  Harrison  Avenue  Extension 
Charles  Sumner        ...... 

John  Albion  Andrew         ..... 

Shaw  Memorial       ...... 

Ball's  Washington    • 

Josiah  Quincy  ...... 

Edward  Everett       .  ..... 

House  of  Daniel  Webster  .... 

Water  Celebration   ...... 

John  Lowell,  Jr.      ,  .  .  ,  ,  , 

Horace  Mann  ...... 

Thomas  Handasyd  Perkins  .... 

Early  Ether  Operation      ..... 

Boston  Public  Library  :  Bates  Hall 

William  Barton  Rogers      ..... 

House  of  Edwin  Booth     ..... 

Museum  of  Fine  Arts :   Greek  Sculptures 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


XV 


Phillips  Brooks 

Trinity  Church  Tower 

Trinity  Church,  Summer  Street 

Back  Bay  in  1 8 1 4  . 

Back  Bay  in  1836  . 

Site  of  Mechanics'  Fair  Building,  1 8  7 

Water-color  Drawing 
View  from  State  House,  1858   . 
Ruins  of  Great  Fire 
Entrance  to  South  Terminal  Station 
Franklin  Park  :   Playstead 
North  End  Beach    . 
Bonner  Map,  1722,  and  Modern  Boston  Proper 
Pitcher  in  Possession  of  Bostonian  Society 


I.      From  Contemporary 


PAGE 

344 
347 
350 
354 
355 

359 
361 

367 
372 
379 
383 
386 
388 


.--> 


THE  PROVINCE  HOUSE  VANE 


BOSTON 

The   Place  and  the   People 


FOUNDATION    AND    EARLY    YEARS 

THE  lover  of  the  pic- 
turesque makes  just 
complaint  against  modern 
life  for  its  levelling  and 
all-assimilating  tendencies. 
Through  a  thousand  agen- 
cies, individuals  are  under- 
going the  experience  of 
fractions  about  to  be  added, 
—  reduction  to  a  common 
denominator.  Perform  the  addition,  and  your  sum 
total  represents  the  vast,  homogeneous  modern  state. 
When  the  persons  of  such  a  state  build  a  city,  it  can- 
not be  expected  to  differ  in  any  marked  degree  from 
the  city  founded  just  before  or  after  it.  Not  so  the 
cities  and  men  of  the  older  time.  It  was  inevitable 
that  the  town  should  begin  and  continue  with  highly 
characteristic  qualities  of  its  own. 


2  BOSTON 

The  wit  who  said,  "  gqston  is  not  a  city,  but  a  state 
of  mind,"  may  not  have  realized  how  much  of  historic 
significance  was  in  his  remark.  If  there  ever  was  a 
community  which  did  not  merely  happen,  but  repre- 
sented a  definite  idea,  embodied  and  strengthened 
through  all  the  life  of  its  formative  years,  that  com- 
munity was  .  the  city  —  the  "  state  of  mind  "  —  of 
Boston.  "  JThis  town  of  Boston,"  said  Emerson,  "  has 
a  history.  It  is  not  an  accident,  not  a  windmill,  or  a 
railroad  station,  or  cross-roads  tavern,  or  an  army-bar- 
racks grown  up  by  time  and  luck  to  a  place  of  wealth ; 
but  a  seat  of  humanity,  of  men  of  principle,  obeying  a 
sentiment  and  marching  loyally  whither  that  should 
lead  them  ;  so  that  its  annals  are  great  historical  lines, 
inextricably  national ;  part  of  the  history  of  political 
liberty.  I  do  not  speak  with  any  fondness,  but  the 
language  of  coldest  history,  when  I  say  that  Boston 
commands  attention  as  the  town  which  was  appointed 
in  the  destiny  of  nations  to  lead  the  civilization  of 
North  America." 

The  town  to  which  such  leadership  can  be  ascribed 
must  have  had  early  leaders  at  whom  it  is  well  worth 
while  to  look ;  and  they  in  turn  must  have  had  their 
leadings  in  influences  of  no  common  moment  and 
cogency.  Like  the  heredity  and  childhood  of  every 
man  and  woman,  the  parentage  and  infancy  of  each 
American  colony  had  a  quality  peculiar  to  itself  and  of 
the  highest  importance  in  determining  its  future  course. 
This  is  no  place  for  a  comparative  study  of  these  qual- 
ities ;  yet  it  should  be  noted  that  the  Boston  settlement 


FOUNDATION  AND  EARLY  YEARS  3 

held  a  unique  distinction  in  the  fact  that  with  its 
founders  came  the  actual  charter  of  its  existence  and 
government.  It  was  at  first  and  for  many  years  virtu- 
ally independent  of  control  from  the  mother  country. 
The  first  step  toward  this  independence  was  taken 
when  twelve  members  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Com- 
pany met  in  Cambridge  in  Old  England,  on  August 
265  1629,  and  signed  their  names  to  an  agreement 
binding  them  and  their  families  to  emigrate  to  the 
Company's  plantations,  there  to  "  inhabit  and  con- 
tinue," provided  the  whole  government  and  the  royal 
patent  should  be  transferred  and  should  remain  with 
them.  Two  days  later  the  Company  as  a  whole  voted 
to  support  this  determination,  and  the  distinctive  be- 
ginnings of  Boston  were  assured. 

Inconspicuous  amongst  the  names  of  these  twelve 
venturous  spirits  stood  the  signature  of  John  Winthrop. 
Though  he  had  biit  recently  become  a  member  of  the 
Company,  it  was  upon  him  about  two  months  later 
that  the  office  of  governorship  was  conferred.  He 
had  received  "  extraordinary  great  commendations," 
the  Records  of  the  election  say,  "  both  for  his  integ- 
rity and  sufficiency,  as  being  one  every  [way]  fitted  and 
accomplished  for  the  place  of  Governor."  In  his 
forty-first  year,  thrice  married,  a  lawyer,  justice  of  the 
peace,  and  Lord  of  the  Manor  of  Groton,  of  excellent 
birth  and  breeding,  acquired  in  part  through  two  years 
of  study  at  Trinity  College,  Cambridge ;  equipped, 
moreover,  with  abundant  native  gifts  of  gentleness, 
strength,  and  wisdom,  he  was  indeed  as  capable  a  rep- 


4  BOSTON 

resentative  of  the  great  Puritan  gentry  of  England  as 
could  well  be  found  to  lead  and  mould  the  undertaking 
to  which  he  was  called.  His  English  life  belonged  to 
that  time  of  which  George  Herbert  wrote:  — 

■<'  Religion  stands  on  tiptoe  in  our  land. 
Ready  to  pass  to  the  American  strand." 

While  Winthrop  himself  was  preparing  in  London  for 
his  momentous  departure,  and  intending  to  leave  his 
wife  behind  for  a  year,  he  could  write  to  her  thus : 
"  If  now  the  Lord  be  thy  God,  thou  must  show  it  by 
trusting  in  him,  and  resigning  thyself  quietly  to  his 
good  pleasure.  If  now  Christ  be  thy  Husband,  thou 
must  show  what  sure  and  sweet  intercourse  is  between 
him  and  thy  soul,  when  it  shall  be  no  hard  thing  for 
thee  to  part  with  an  earthly,  mortal,  infirm  husband 
for  his  sake." 

If  the  domestic  aspect  of  his  enterprise  was  so 
regarded,  it  is  no  wonder  that  he  should  have  written 
of  its  more  general  bearing :  "  seeing  the  Church 
hath  no  place  left  to  fly  into  but  the  wilderness,  what 
better  work  can  there  be,  than  to  go  and  provide  tab- 
ernacles and  food  for  her  against  she  comes  thither." 
And  in  both  these  respects,  the  personal  and  the  gen- 
eral, Winthrop  was  merely  the  mouthpiece  for  the 
controlling  spirit  of  his  followers.  Of  all  the  early 
comers  to  New  England,  one  of  their  immediate 
successors  said  in  1688,  "God  sifted  a  whole  nation 
that  he  might  send  choice  grain  into  the  wilderness." 
Winthrop  and  his  closest  associates  could  surely  be 


FOUNDATION  AND  EARLY  YEARS 


called  "  choice  grain."  The  company  which  during 
ten  months  of  preparation  joined  itself  to  them  was  of 
course  not  wholly  made  up,  like  the  leaders,  of  men  of 
education  and  influence ;  but  neither  was  it  composed 
of  mere  adventurers  and  troublesome  younger  sons.  It 
was  drawn  chiefly  from  the  sturdy  yeoman  stock  of  the 
East  Anglian  counties, 
where  Puritanism  had 
its  stronghold.  In  this 
quiet  region  it  is  not 
fanciful  to  place  the 
average  strength  and 
stability  of  unmixed 
English  character. 
Here  was  the  England 
of  pleasant  farmsteads 
and  well-ordered  do- 
mestic life  which  Ten- 
nyson two  centuries  later  knew  as  a  boy,  and  has  taught 
all  readers  of  English  poetry  to  regard  as  typical  of 
his  land.  It  was  essentially  a  good  place  to  come 
from,  a  hard  place  to  leave ;  and  the  rank  and  file  of 
the  emigration  resembled  its  leaders  in  their  readiness 
to  give  up  an  existing  good  for  a  problematical  better, 
in  which  the  freedom  to  worship  God  in  their  own 
way  played  an  important  part.  Their  idea  of  freedom 
may  have  involved  much  which  seems  slavish  to  mod- 
ern minds,  yet  it  is  no  small  thing  for  men  to  yield 
themselves  as  they  did  to  the  control  of  an  idea. 

It  was   in    October    of   1629    that    Winthrop    was 


Initial  Word  of  Original  Charter  of 
THE  Massachusetts  Bay  Company, 
preserved  in  the  State-house. 


6  BOSTON 

elected  governor  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  Company. 
Four  of  the  twelve  ships  in  which  his  expedition  was 
to  cross  the  Atlantic  were  ready  to  sail  on  the  22d 
of  the  following  March.  There  were  a  few  delays, 
but  on  the  8th  of  April  the  voyage  actually  began. 
With  Winthrop  on  the  Arhella^  named  for  the  Lady 
Arbella,  daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Lincoln,  and  wife  of 
Isaac  Johnson,  were  this  lady  herself,  her  husband, 
Sir  Richard  Saltonstall,  William  Coddington,  the  first 
governor  of  Rhode  Island,  Simon  Bradstreet,  the  young- 
est assistant,  destined  to  carry  the  earliest  traditions  of 
the  colony  farthest  into  its  future,  and  others  whose 
names  are  of  frequent  recurrence  in  the  annals  of 
New  England.  The  three  other  ships  were  the 
Ambrose  J  the  Jewels  and  the  Talbot.  On  one  of  these 
sailed  John  Wilson,  the  first  minister  of  the  "  First 
Church  of  Boston."  Before  the  actual  departure 
took  place  the  emigrants  on  board  the  Arbella  ad- 
dressed a  Farewell  Letter  "  to  the  rest  of  their  brethren 
in  and  of  the  Church  of  England."  They  wrote  "  as 
those  who  esteem  it  our  honor  to  call  the  Church  of 
England,  from  whence  we  rise,  our  dear  mother;"  and 
declared,  "we  leave  it  not,  therefore,  as  loathing  that  milk 
wherewith  we  were  nourished  there."  The  Pilgrim 
Fathers  who  had  founded  Plymouth  nine  years  before 
were  Separatists  before  they  left  England.  Winthrop 
and  his  fellows  cut  loose  from  the  mother  church  only 
when  they  found  themselves,  with  a  charter  leaving  their 
religious  affairs  in  their  own  hands,  in  a  new  country 
with  its  ecclesiastical  conditions  all  to  be  determined. 


FOUNDATION  AND  EARLY  YEARS  7 

The  church  government  of  Charles  I,  who  three  years 
later  gave  the  Primacy  to  Archbishop  Laud,  was  not 
the  government  they  would  naturally  seek  to  establish. 
At  about  the  time  Laud  came  to  the  Primacy,  the  Rev. 
John  Cotton  emigrated  from  the  old  to  the  new  Bos- 
ton. Two  hundred  and  fifty  years  later  his  very-great- 
grandson  Phillips  Brooks  said,  "  I  thank  him,  as  a 
Church-of-England  man,  as  a  man  loving  the  Epis- 
copal Church  with  all  my  heart,  I  thank  him  for 
being  a  Puritan."  So  indeed  may  the  later  genera- 
tions turn  with  gratitude  to  the  earlier. 

Through  the  first  pages  of  the  journal  kept  by 
Winthrop  for  nineteen  years  and  now  reprinted  as  the 
History  of  New  England^  one  may  gain  many  glimpses 
of  the  voyage  across.  When  the  emigrants  think 
themselves  pursued  by  hostile  ships,  they  pray  and, 
in  a  moment,  are  ready  to  fight  with  equal  zeal.  In 
a  great  storm,  says  Winthrop,  "  few  of  our  people 
were  sick,  (except  the  women,  who  kept  under 
hatches,)  and  there  appeared  no  fear  or  dismayedness 
among  them."  The  evil  practices  of  a  servant  who 
tried  to  sell  biscuits  for  his  own  unwarranted  profit 
were  punished  after  a  gentle  fashion  of  the  day :  his 
hands  wer»  tied  to  a  bar  above  his  head,  a  bag  of 
stones  was  hung  about  his  neck,  and  thus  he  stood 
for  two  hours.  Besides  the  entries  in  his  diary 
Winthrop  wrote,  during  the  voyage,  a  paper  setting 
forth  the  course  of  conduct  the  colonists  should  pur- 
sue in  order  to  make  their  enterprise  truly  a  success. 
No  sentence  in  the  paper  is  more  significant  than  this, 


8 


BOSTON 


"  We  must  be  willing  to  abridge  ourselves  of  our  super- 
fluities, for  the  supply  of  others'  necessities/'  To  voy- 
agers whose  leadership  could  thus  express  itself  we  are 
glad  to  read  at  last  that  the  smell 
off  the  shore  came  like  that  of  a 
garden.  On  June  12,  1630  (O.S.), 
the  ships,  having  sailed  for  seventy 
days  more  than  the  allotted  six  of 
modern  travel,  dropped  their  an- 
chors in  the  harbor  of  Salem. 

Here  John  Endicott,  acting  as 
governor  under  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Company,  had  already  been 
for  two  years  at  the  head  of  a  set- 
tlement now  numbering  three  hun- 
dred souls.  Across  the  bay,  at 
Plymouth,  the  Pilgrims'  colony 
had  in  nine  years  grown  to  about 
the  same  number.  Smaller  groups, 
from  little  settlements  down  to  in- 
dividual families,  were  established 
at  other  points  in  the  neighbor- 
hood. The  coming  of  Winthrop 
and  his  followers  was  therefore  an 
unprecedented  event.  AVith  him 
and  immediately  afterwards,  forming  a  part  of  his 
expedition,  came  seven  or  eight  hundred  persons.  On 
the  heels  of  these  followed  two  or  three  hundred  more, 
and  after  these  in  turn  came  quickly  so  many  colonists 
that  the  total  number  with  which  his  settlement  virtu- 


The  Gift  of  Governor 
jno  Winthrop  to  ye 
jT  Church,"  still 
AMONG  ITS  Commun- 
ion Plate. 


FOUNDATION  AND  EARLY  YEARS  9 

ally  began  amounted  to  about  two  thousand.  This 
was  indeed  the  foundation  for  important  state-building. 
Where  so  considerable  a  company  should  plant  itself 
to  the  best  advantage  was  of  course  the  first  great 
question  to  be  settled.  At  Charlestown,  across  the 
river  from  the  three-hilled  promontory  of  Shawmut, 
which  has  been  translated  "  hving  fountains,"  they 
found  the  beginnings  of  a  town  already  made,  and 
pitched  upon  the  site  for  their  abode.  The  midsum- 
mer heats  of  the  place,  however,  were  rendered  the 
harder  to  endure  by  a  lack  of  good  fresh  water.  Many 
of  the  colonists,  already  weakened  by  the  hardships  of 
their  voyage,  fell  sick  and  died.  The  early  town  records 
describe  the  people  as  "  generally  very  loving  and 
pitiful "  toward  each  other  during  this  baleful  sum- 
mer, yet  the  place  was  not  to  be  endured ;  and  when 
the  Rev.  William  Blackstone, — 

*' old  Shawmut' s  pioneer. 
The  parson  on  his  brindled  bull/'  — 

came  to  Winthrop  and  bade  him  welcome  to  his 
peninsula,  where  good  water  abounded,  the  greater 
part  of  the  community  crossed  the  Charles  and  began 
vigorously  to  prepare  themselves  for  the  coming  of 
winter.  This  final,  short  migration  was  made  in 
September  of  1630. 

As  the  settlers  had  looked  across  the  river,  the  most 
conspicuous  object  in  the  landscape  had  been  the 
three-pronged  eminence  of  what  is  now  Beacon  Hill. 
The  name  of  Trimountaine  (now  Tremont)  had  accord- 


lo  BOSTON 

ingly  been  given  to  the  place.  In  the  very  month  of 
the  departure  from  Charlestown  it  appears  that  the 
Court  of  Assistants,  the  first  legislative  body  of  the 
colony,  had  met  and  voted  "  that  Trimountaine  shall 
be  called  Boston."  It  was  from  Boston  in  old  Eng- 
land that  the  Lady  Arbella  and  her  husband,  Isaac 
Johnson, — neither  of  whom  survived  the  early  autumn, 

—  had  come;  and  Boston  was  the  county  seat  of  the 
Lincolnshire  upon  which  many  of  the  colonists  looked 
back  as  their  home.  Yet  the  new  town  did  not  receive 
its  name  after  the  fashion  of  New  Amsterdam,  New 
York,  or  New  Orleans.  The  new  Boston  was  simply 
to  be  another  Boston,  new  perhaps  in  a  better  sense 
than  that  implied  by  a  capital  letter. 

Certainly  the  colonists  did  not  propose  to  leave 
their  white  and  Indian  neighbors  in  any  uncertainty 
regarding  their  attitude  toward  life  and  conduct.  One 
of  their  first  actions  - —  even  before  leaving  Charlestown 

—  was  to  summon  from  Mount  Wollaston,  now  in  the 
city  of  Quincy,  one  Thomas  Morton,  who  ruled  over 
the  settlement  of  Merrymount,  and  with  his  roistering 
followers  presented  anything  but  an  edifying  example 
of  seriousness.  His  religious  sympathies  were  with 
the  unreformed  Church  of  England.  Apparently  the 
reddest-lettered  feast  in  his  calendar  was  Mayday ; 
and  if  one  wishes  to  know  what  revels  took  place 
round  his  Maypole,  one  may  find  pages  of  imaginative 
writing  by  Hawthorne  and  Motley  which  tell  the 
story  with  enough  of  historical  accuracy.  Morton 
indeed  represented   the   phases   of  English   life   most 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     ii 

objectionable  to  the  Puritans  who  had  left  home  in 
search  of  straighter,  narrower  paths,  and  it  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that,  with  the  power  to  suppress,  they 
would  tolerate  him.  Winthrop  and  his  associates 
passed  swift  judgment  that  he  was   to  be  set  in   the 


From  the  Court  Record  of  the  Naming  of  Boston. 

bilboes  and  returned  to  England  in  a  ship  soon  to 
sail ;  his  goods  were  to  be  seized  to  pay  his  passage, 
his  debts,  and  the  just  dues  of  some  Indians  whose 
canoe  he  had  stolen ;  furthermore,  for  the  general 
satisfaction  of  the  Indians  whom  he  had  misused,  his 
emptied  house  was  to  be  burned  to  the  ground  in 
their  presence.  Except  that  he  was  held  over  for  a 
ship  sailing  a  little  later  than  the  one  first  determined 
upon,  this  sentence  was  carried  out,  with  two  additions 
not  on  the  programme :  Morton  offered  such  personal 
resistance  to  his  embarkation  that  he  was  hoisted  on 
board  the  ship  by  means  of  a  tackle,  and  the  firing  of 
his  house  was  so  carefully  timed  that  the  sight  of  it  in 
flames  was  one  of  the  last  things  upon  which  his  eyes 
rested  as  he  sailed  out  of  Boston  harbor. 

It  is  fair  to  add  that  when  the  faithful  offended,  the 
rigor  of  the  law  was  in  nowise  omitted.  It  was  an 
early  order  of  the  court  that  no  one  of  the  "Assistants" 


12  BOSTON 

—  of  whom  the  charter  provided  for  eighteen  as 
the  persons  next  in  authority  to  the  Governor  and 
Deputy  Governor  —  should  administer  corporal  pun- 
ishment unless  a  second  Assistant  were  present.  Sir 
Richard  Saltonstall,  ignoring  this  rule,  whipped  two 
persons ;  whereupon  a  penalty  of  five  pounds  was 
promptly  imposed  upon  him  by  his  fellows.  Even 
a  more  poetic  justice  was  meted  out  to  the  carpenter 
who  made  the  first  stocks  for  the  town,  and  rendered 
an  exorbitant  bill  for  his  work.  His  immediate  pun- 
ishment was  to  be  cast  into  the  pit  he  had  digged  — 
to  sit  in  his  own  stocks,  as  an  unexpected  warning  to 
the  evildoers  for  whose  ankles  his  handiwork  was 
designed. 

This  was  the  true  Old  Testament  method  of  deal- 
ing with  sinners,  and  it  may  well  be  doubted  whether 
elsewhere  outside  of  ancient  Jewry,  life  and  law  have 
ever  been  ordered  according  to  standards  more  strictly 
Biblical.  Even  the  children  were  named  on  the  as- 
sumption that  not  only  — 

**  Young  Obadias, 
David,  and  Josias, 
All  were  pious," 

but  that  whenever  a  Christian  name  could  be  made 
Hebrew  its  bearer  was  the  better  for  it.  Judge  Sewall 
expressed  a  direct  inheritance  of  thought  when  near  the 
end  of  the  seventeenth  century  he  recorded  the  wish 
for  his  infant  daughter  that  she  might  be  helped  "to 
speak  the  Jews  Language  and  to  forget  that  of  Ashdod." 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     13 

In  the  affairs  of  state  one  need  not  look  far  for  the 
expression  of  a  similar  spirit.  In  1636,  three  years 
after  the  coming  of  the  Rev.  John  Cotton  to  Boston, 
he  was  asked  to  join  with  other  ministers  and  some  of 
the  Magistrates — as  the  Assistants  came  to  be  called 
—  in  compiling  a  body  of  fundamental  laws.  For 
these  he  went  to  the  book  of  Leviticus,  and  codifying 
its  contents  in  a  manner  which  he  thought  suited  to 
the  needs  of  Massachusetts,  presented  the  result  to  the 
General  Court.  This  code  of  "  Moses,  His  Judi- 
cial"  was  not  adopted,  but  the  laws  that  were  decided 
upon,  the  "  Body  of  Liberties  "  drawn  by  Nathaniel 
Ward,  the  "  Simple  Cobbler  of  Aggawam,"  were  of  a 
character  eminently  Hebraic,  and  were  based  in  many 
instances  directly  upon  Old  Testament  texts. 

There  is  nothing  to  excite  surprise  in  this  Biblical 
foundation  for  civil  affairs.  The  civil  authorities  showed 
their  very  dependence  upon  the  ecclesiastical  by  look- 
ing to  the  clergy  as  to  a  court  of  higher  appeal  for 
counsel  on  doubtful  matters.  The  Rev.  John  Cotton 
frequently  used  his  Thursday  lectures  for  giving 
almost  authoritative  advice  on  points  at  issue  in  the 
secular  court.  Within  less  than  a  year  from  the 
founding  of  the  town  the  General  Court  passed  an 
order  limiting  to  members  of  the  churches  within  the 
colony  the  right  of  voting  conferred  by  the  charter 
upon  freemen.  This  excluded  from  citizenship  an 
increasing  number  of  excellent  persons.  By  1676 
five-sixths  of  the  men  in  the  colony  had  no  vote  on 
civil  affairs.     The  mere  fact  that  this  condition  could 


14  BOSTON 

maintain  itself  so  long  —  and  longer  —  speaks  volumes 
for  the  power  of  ecclesiasticism. 

By  what  seems  to  us  now  a  curious  contradiction, 
the  rites  of  marriage  and  burial  in  the  earliest  days  of 
Boston  were  not  performed  by  the  ministers,  but  by 
civil  functionaries.  The  drum,  not  the  bell,  was  used 
to  summon  the  Puritan  "  meeting-going  animal  "  —  as 
John  Adams  defined  the  New  England  man  —  to  the 
frequent  religious  exercises.  These  facts,  together 
with  the  circumstance  that  the  public  reading  of  the 
Scriptures  without  exposition  was  not  permitted, 
must,  however,  be  laid  rather  to  a  zealous  avoidance 
of  all  things  savoring  of  ritual  than  to  any  unreadi- 
ness of  the  ministers  to  bear  a  part  in  affairs  falHng 
within  or  without  their  special  province.  The  warp 
and  woof  of  life  in  early  Boston  were  essentially  ec- 
clesiastical, and  the  first  great  disturbance  of  the  peace 
arose,  naturally  enough,  from  a  theological  controversy. 

The  so-called  "  Antinomian  "  episode  was  one  of 
the  significant  events  of  the  first  decade  in  Boston, 
and  as  such  deserves  some  special  scrutiny.  "  Boston 
never  wanted  a  good  principle  of  rebellion  in  it,"  said 
Emerson,  "  from  the  planting  until  now."  The  rebel- 
lion led  by  Mrs.  Anne  Hutchinson  was  against  a  blind 
following  of  the  ruling  clergy.  It  has  been  well  de- 
scribed as  "  New  England's  earliest  protest  against 
formulas."  Its  leader  stands  head  and  shoulders 
above  the  transcendental  women  of  all  periods  of 
Boston  history  in  her  success  in  putting  the  whole 
machinery  of  church  and  state  out  of  running  order. 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     17 

In  1634  she  had  come  from  Lincolnshire  to  Boston, 
in  the  footsteps  of  John  Cotton,  whom  she  ardently 
admired  in  both  places.  Her  husband,  William 
Hutchinson,  was  defined  in  his  time  as  "  a  man  of 
very  mild  temper  and  weak  parts,  and  wholly  guided 
by  his  wife."  As  these  very  words  imply,  she  was 
directly  his  opposite.  It  is  said  that  she  was  a  cousin 
to  John  Dryden.  In  her  new  home  it  is  easier  to 
place  her  by  saying  that  she  lived  where  the  "  Old 
Corner  Bookstore "  has  long  stood  in  Boston.  At 
the  very  first  she  distinguished  herself  from  the  crowd 
by  her  ministrations  to  the  sick  amongst  her  own  sex. 
But,  in  addition  to  her  practical  qualities,  she  possessed 
mental  and  spiritual  gifts  of  which  she  soon  began  to 
give  evidence.  When,  within  a  year  or  two  of  her 
arrival,  she  organized  a  weekly  meeting  of  women, 
it  was  thought  that  she  was  doing  the  town  a  good 
service.  Her  plan  was  to  repeat  the  substance  of  Mr. 
Cotton's  latest  sermon,  and  by  comment  and  inter- 
pretation to  strengthen  its  impression.  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson was  a  woman  of  shrewd  inteUigence  and  spiritual 
insight,  but  for  her  or  any  other  woman  to  act  as  the 
champion  of  one  minister,  without  pointing  out  the 
shortcomings  of  the  others  in  the  community,  would 
have  been  almost  superhuman.  The  ministers  were 
used  to  being  considered  beyond  reproach ;  but  here 
was  the  cleverest  woman  in  town  telling  the  fifty, 
eighty,  or  a  hundred  other  women  who  came  to  her 
assembhes,  that  Mr.  Cotton  was  the  only  Boston  min- 
ister under  the  "  Covenant  of  Grace."     The  others. 


1 8  BOSTON 

being  under  a  "  Covenant  of  Works,"  were  not  "sealed," 
were  not  "  able  ministers."  Reduced  to  the  terms  of 
modern  speech,  and  stated  as  favorably  as  possible,  her 
central  teaching  was  that  the  spirit  of  Christianity 
dwelling  in  a  man*s  heart  was  the  important  thing  for 
him,  over  and  above  any  outward  manifestations  of 
piety.  But  the  theological  speech  of  the  day  involved 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  and  those  who  disagreed  with  her 
in  the  most  abstruse  discussions  of  "  sanctification," 
"justification,"  and  scores  of  other  questions  which, 
for  the  mind  of  a  modern  layman,  could  have  only  an 
academic  interest.  To  the  seventeenth  century  Puri- 
tan, lay  or  clerical,  the  truth  of  these  questions  was 
amazingly  vital ;  and  by  causing  all  the  women  of  the 
place  to  think  and  talk  about  her  new  doctrines, 
Mrs.  Hutchinson,  whether  knowingly  or  not,  took 
the  surest  means  of  making  general  trouble. 

In  Boston  itself  it  appears  that  most  of  the  pious 
folk  found  themselves  on  her  side  of  the  dispute.  In 
any  event  the  good  order  of  the  churches  was  much 
disturbed  through  the  restlessness  of  persons  who  left 
their  own  places  of  worship  in  search  of  congenial 
preaching.  Winthrop  himself  has  borne  record  that 
it  became  as  common  to  distinguish  between  men  by 
saying  that  they  were  under  a  Covenant  of  Grace,  or 
of  Works,  as,  in  other  countries,  by  calling  them 
Protestants  and  Papists.  In  opposing  the  new  teach- 
ings Winthrop  had  the  support  of  the  Rev.  John 
Wilson,  his  fellow-emigrant,  of  the  ministers  in  the 
outlying  towns,  and  of  an  active  minority  of  the  laity 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     19 

in  Boston.  In  support  of  Anne  Hutchinson  the  most 
conspicuous  lay  figure  —  so  to  call  him  —  was  Sir 
Harry  Vane,  "young  in  years,  but  in  sage  counsel 
old/'  of  whom  Milton  further  wrote,  surely  without 
recalling  the  part  he  played  in  the  little  Boston 
tempest,  — 

"  on  thy  firm  hand  Religion  leans 
In  peace,  and  reckons  thee  her  eldest  son." 

Under  his  portrait  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery  in 
London  are  the  less  flattering  words,  "He  was  of  a 
turbulent  and  visionary  temperament,"  —  possibly  a 
truer  definition. 

In  less  than  eight  months  after  his  arrival  in  Boston 
in  the  autumn  of  1635,  he  was  elected  to  the  governor- 
ship, when  he  was  but  twenty-four  years  old.  Young 
as  the  colony  was,  it  had  lived  long  enough  to  have 
traditions  —  and  consequently  a  conservative  and  an 
"  advanced "  element.  Winthrop  w^as  the  natural 
leader  of  the  one,  and  Vane  of  the  other,  in  matters 
relating  both  to  the  state  and  to  the  church.  On  the 
day  after  Vane's  election  the  Rev.  John  Wheelwright, 
Anne  Hutchinson's  brother-in-law,  a  minister  of  great 
independence,  landed  in  Boston.  It  was  not  long  be- 
fore Mrs.  Hutchinson  did  him  the  doubtful  kindness 
of  placing  him  beside  Cotton  as  an  "  able  "  minister, 
distinguished,  like  Cotton,  from  the  rest  as  a  preacher 
of  the  Covenant  of  Grace. 

Here  then  were  the  rival  factions  provided  with 
powerful   champions.     To    us    of  this    later    day  the 


20  BOSTON 

strangest  thing  about  the  conflict  into  which  they  cast 
themselves,  is  that  persons  of  so  great  intellectual 
force  could  have  looked  upon  the  points  at  issue  as 
worthy  of  the  zeal  with  which  the  contest  was  waged. 
But  precisely  therein  lies  the  significance  of  the  con- 
troversy. The  mere  facts  of  its  cause  and  its  virulence 
go  far  to  explain  the  early  New  Englander,  and  to  re- 
move the  need  of  extended  comment  in  this  place. 
It  would  be  superfluous  to  follow  out  all  the  details  of 
charges  and  countercharges,  hearings,  Synod,  and  trials. 
The  victory  of  the  conservative  party,  the  triumph  of 
conformity  to  the  new-world  rule  of  "  lord-brethren," 
is  the  upshot  of  the  story.  First  Vane,  having  be- 
trayed his  youth  by  using  his  governorship  for  a 
boyish  furtherance  of  party  issues,  comes  up  for  re- 
election, and  is  defeated  —  but  only  after  the  dignified 
Wilson  cHmbs  a  tree  to  harangue  the  voters  on  behalf 
of  Winthrop.  Then  a  Synod  declares  that  the  unsafe 
heretical  opinions  which  have  gained  currency  mount 
to  the  number  of  eighty-two,  exclusive  of  nine  "un- 
wholesome expressions."  It  is  no  wonder  that  Haw- 
thorne, in  his  Grandfather  s  Chair ^  permits  the  listening 
boy  to  observe,  "  If  they  had  eighty-two  wrong  opinions, 
I  don't  see  how  they  could  have  any  right  ones."  The 
Synod  having  done  its  work,  the  General  Court  purges 
itself  of  "  Antinomiam "  members,  and  proceeds  to 
banish  Wheelwright.  Last  of  all  comes  the  disgrace- 
ful trial  of  Anne  Hutchinson  herself  The  Court,  in 
spite  of  its  brow-beating  methods,  fails  to  convict  her 
on  the  original  charge  of  speaking  ill  of  the  ministers, 


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Sir  Henry  Vane, 
Statue  by  Frederick  MacMonnies,  in  the  Boston  Public  Library. 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     23 

and  attains  its  triumph  only  when  she  gives  way  to  the 
exercise  of  her  wholly  intolerable  gift  of  prophecy,  and 
foretells  ruin  for  her  judges  and  their  posterity.  This 
is  sufficient.  The  state  decrees  her  banishment,  and 
after  an  ecclesiastical  trial  her  enemy  Wilson  pro- 
nounces this  sentence  of  excommunication  :  "  There- 
fore in  the  name  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  in  the 
name  of  the  church,  I  do  not  only  pronounce  you 
worthy  to  be  cast  out,  but  I  do  cast  you  out ;  and  in 
the  name  of  Christ  I  do  deliver  you  up  to  Satan,  that 
you  may  learn  no  more  to  blaspheme,  to  seduce  and 
to  lie ;  and  I  do  account  you  from  this  time  forth  to 
be  a  Heathen  and  a  Publican,  and  so  to  be  held  of  all 
the  Brethren  and  Sisters  of  this  congregation  and  of 
others :  therefore  I  command  you  in  the  name  of 
Christ  Jesus  and  of  this  church  as  a  Leper  to  withdraw 
yourself  out  of  this  congregation." 

The  unfortunate  Leper,  Heathen,  and  Publican, 
delivered  over  to  Satan  to  learn  better  manners,  be- 
took herself  to  Rhode  Island,  and  thence  to  Man- 
hattan Island,  where  with  nearly  all  her  family  she 
was  murdered  by  Indians.  Against  all  the  inhuman 
items  of  her  story,  it  is  refreshing  to  place  the  words 
which  her  husband  —  "mild"  as  he  may  have  been  — 
spoke  to  the  three  delegates  of  the  Boston  church 
who  followed  them  into  their  exile  to  look  into  the 
state  of  religious  affairs  in  Rhode  Island,  "  Mr. 
Hutchinson  told  us,"  the  delegates  reported,  "  he  was 
more  nearly  tied  to  his  wife  than  to  the  church ;  he 
thought  her  to  be  a  dear  saint  and  servant  of  God." 


24  BOSTON 

In  the  midst  of  the  Antinomian  controversy,  two 
remarkable  orders  were  enacted  by  the  legislature. 
One  of  them  called  upon  seventy-five  persons  — 
fifty-eight  of  them  residents  of  Boston  —  to  dehver 
up  whatever  arms  and  ammunition  they  might  possess. 
Evidently  the  authorities  regarded  the  doctrines  and 
the  possible  actions  of  the  "  Antinomians  "  as  equally 
dangerous.  The  second  law  put  into  effect  the  feeling 
which  Nathaniel  Ward,  in  the  next  decade,  put  into 
words  when  he  proclaimed  "  to  the  world,  in  the  name 
of  our  Colony,  that  all  Familists,  Antinomians,  Ana- 
baptists, and  other  enthusiasts,  shall  have  free  Liberty 
to  keep  away  from  us,  and  such  as  will  come  to  be 
gone  as  fast  as  they  can,  the  sooner  the  better."  The 
law,  supported  by  Winthrop  and  opposed  by  Vane, 
imposed  a  heavy  fine  upon  any  citizen  who,  without 
permission  of  the  authorities,  should  receive  into  his 
house  a  stranger  intending  to  remain  in  the  place,  or 
should  rent  him  land  or  dwelling-house.  Friends  of 
Wheelwright  and  relatives  of  the  Hutchinsons  were 
known  to  be  on  the  way  when  this  remarkable  "alien 
law  "  was  adopted.  Its  prompt  enforcement  on  their 
arrival  made  them  continue  their  search  for  a  place 
of  settlement,  and  established  for  a  time  a  wholly 
anomalous  standard  for  citizenship  in  Massachusetts. 
In  this  way  could  a  rehgious  dissension  make  its  mark 
on  the  secular  legislation  of  the  period. 

From  even  smaller  beginnings,  in  1636,  arose  a 
dispute  which  had  for  its  outcome,  in  1644,  the 
division  of   the    legislative  body   into   an   upper   and 


FOUNDATION  AND   EARLY  YEARS     25 

lower  house.  The  question  was  that  of  the  owner- 
ship of  a  stray  pig,  claimed  respectively  by  a  poor 
Mrs.  Sherman  and  by  one  Robert  Keayne,  the  first 
captain  of  the  Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery 
Company,  which  took  its  title  in  Boston  from  the 
organization   of  the   same   name, 

of  which  Captain  Keayne  had  "S^P^iMr  T^^f^num 
been  a  member  in  London.    The 

church  decided  first  in  favor  of  the  captain.  Then 
the  widow  carried  the  case  to  the  courts,  where  it  gath- 
ered importance,  assumed  the  aspect  of  a  political 
question  between  the  aristocratic  and  the  democratic 
class,  and  took  a  prominent  place  in  the  discussions 
of  the  General  Court  for  more  than  a  year.  The 
important  result  of  the  conflict  was  that  the  "  Assist- 
ants "  or  Magistrates  of  the  Company,  and  the  dele- 
gates from  the  towns,  who  had  sat  together  as  a  single 
body,  were  divided  into  two  houses,  of  which  each 
could  veto  the  proceedings  of  the  other.  "  Mrs. 
Sherman's  pig,"  said  a  pubKc  speaker  some  two 
hundred  years  later,  "  was  the  origin  of  the  present 
Senate,"  and  he  hoped  "the  members  of  it  would  not 
disgrace  their  progenitor."  The  infant  colony  which 
within  a  few  years  passed  an  "alien  law"  excluding 
Antinomians,  and  mended  its  machinery  of  gov- 
ernment shown  to  be  imperfect  through  the  agency 
of  a  poor  woman's  pig,  was  certainly  a  settlement  of 
which  individual  and  unusual  things  were  fairly  to 
be  expected. 


II 


COLONIAL     BOSTON 


T 


Royal  Arms   from    the 

Council  Chamber  of 

THE  Old  S  tate-house. 

Now  in  Trinity  Church, 

St.  John,  N.B. 


O  the  person  of  exact  mind, 
demanding  frequent  periods 
of  division  in  the  history  of  Bos- 
ton, the  interval  between  the 
founding  of  the  town  in  1630 
and  the  withdrawal  of  the  charter 
of  King  Charles  I  in  1684  must 
seem  unduly  long.  But  it  was 
this  second  event  which  marked 
the  first  inevitable  turning-point 
in  the  course  of  affairs.  How 
much  it  meant  to  the  men  of  the  Puritan  town,  how 
steadily  and  sturdily  they  opposed  the  change,  it  is 
hard  for  us  who  take  our  forms  of  government  almost 
as  matters  of  course,  to  realize.  To  tell  the  whole 
story  of  the  contest  on  this  point  between  colonists 
and  crown  would  be  to  write  a  separate  volume.  Here 
it  will  suffice  to  touch  upon  the  earlier  and  the  con- 
cluding stages  of  the  conflict,  and  roughly  following 
the  years  that  fell  between,  to  note  a  few  of  the  more 
significant  circumstances  not  immediately  related  to  the 
scheme  of  government. 

Three  years  after  Thomas   Morton's  summary  de- 
portation from  Boston,  he  and  others,  backed  by  men 

26 


COLONIAL   BOSTON 


27 


of  consequence  with  rights  of  their  own  at  stake  in 
New  England,  tried  in  vain  to  bring  the  Privy  Coun- 
cil to  check  the  progress  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay 
Colony.  Still  more  serious  was  the  threatening  of 
disaster  when,  later  in  the  same  year,  1633,  Laud  be- 
came Archbishop  of  Canterbury.  In  and  out  of  Eng- 
land the  Puritan  subjects  of  Great  Britain  had  little  to 
expect  in  the  way  of  favors.  It  came  to  be  thought 
that  to  Boston  especially  malcontents,  civil  and  ecclesi- 
astical, were  betaking  themselves  in  dangerous  num- 
bers. A  few  months  after  Laud's  accession  some 
ships,  ready  to  sail  for  New  England  and  waiting  in 
the  Thames,  were  stayed  by  an  Order  of  Council. 
Masters  and  freighters  were  called  to  appear  before  the 
authorities,  and  the  ships  were  permitted  to  go  their 
way  only  after  the  masters  pledged  themselves  to  the 
use  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer,  morning  and 
evening  during  the  voyage,  and  all  the  emigrants  took 
the  oaths  of  allegiance  and  supremacy.  These  meas- 
ures were  less  alarming,  however,  than  the  Council's 
demand  upon  Mr.  Matthew  Cradock,  Winthrop's 
only  predecessor  in  the  chief  office  of  the  company, 
for  the  original  letters-patent  which  the  emigrants  of 
1630  had  borne  away  with  them. 

If  the  King  did  not  realize  what  a  large  measure  of 
self-government  he  had  granted  a  few  of  his  subjects 
through  the  Massachusetts  charter,  the  possessors  of  it 
were  fully  awake  to  their  advantage.  They  knew  well 
the  number  of  points  counted  in  law  by  actual  posses- 
sion, and,  apparently  with  good  reason,  had  no  fear 


28  BOSTON 

that  the  government  eould  curtail  their  liberties  by  any 
reference  to  the  copy  of  their  precious  document  which 
must  have  existed  in  the  public  archives.  Of  their 
taking  the  charter  to  Massachusetts  with  them,  Judge 
Story  has  said,  "  The  boldness  of  the  step  is  not  more 
striking  than  the  silent  acquiescence  of  the  King  in  per- 
mitting it  to  take  place."  Unless  one  prefers  to  read 
in  the  charter  itself  a  tacit  permission  of  such  a  course, 
the  boldness  and  the  acquiescence  may  both  be  taken 
as  evidence  of  the  laxity  of  administration  under  the 
second  Stuart  king.  But  when  a  letter  from  Cradock 
in  London  came  to  the  Governor  and  Assistants  in 
Boston,  asking  them  to  send  home  the  charter  de- 
manded by  the  Privy  Council,  it  became  apparent  that 
firmness  must  be  practised,  at  least  on  one  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  colonists  at  once  began  to  show  it  in  a 
definite  Fabian  policy  of  procrastination. 

To  this  first  demand  they  sent  back  word  that  the 
General  Court  would  not  meet  for  some  months,  and 
that  nothing  could  be  done  without  its  sanction.  The 
next  alarming  piece  of  news  in  Boston  was  that  a  gen- 
eral governor  would  soon  come  over  to  manage  all  the 
American  colonies,  and  that  all  their  charters  must  be 
examined  by  a  formidable  Commission  in  England 
with  Laud  at  its  head.  When  the  clergy  conferred  with 
the  Governor  and  Assistants  about  the  best  means 
of  meeting  this  danger  they  decided  between  them  not 
to  accept  the  general  governor  "but  defend  our  law- 
ful possessions  if  we  were  able ;  otherwise  to  avoid  or 
protract."     In  the  meantime  they  had  taken  the  first 


A  Bit  of  Fort  Independence. 
(Formerly  Castle  Island.) 


COLONIAL   BOSTON  31 

steps  toward  fortifying  Castle  Island  in  the  harbor. 
When  the  next  General  Court  met  in  March  of  1635, 
it  ordered  a  continuance  of  this  martial  work,  even  to 
the  pressing  of  men  for  the  purpose,  and  provided  for 
warning  the  country  of  any  danger  by  means  of  a 
signal  on  Centry,  or,  as  it  was  thenceforth  to  be  called, 
Beacon  Hill.  Bullets  were  created  fiat  money,  at  the 
value  of  a  farthing  each. 

Ready  as  the  rulers  and  the  people  were  to  fight,  if, 
occasion  should  arise,  the  true  keynote  of  their  policy 
was  summed  up  in  the  phrase  "  to  avoid  or  protract." 
In  the  years  immediately  following,  opportunities  were 
not  wanting  for  the  ingenious  practice  of  this  policy. 
How  skilfully  Winthrop  himself  could  use  it,  is  per- 
haps best  shown  in  his  letter  of  September,  1638,  mak- 
ing humble  supplication  to  the  Lords  Commissioners 
of  Foreign  Plantations  "  that  this  poor  plantation  which 
hath  found  more  favour  from  God  than  many  others, 
may  not  find  less  favour  from  your  Lordships."  In  the 
progress  of  events  more  powerful  forces  even  than  the 
colonists'  own  worldly  wisdom  were  fighting  for  them 
in  England  itself  The  crown,  with  Cromwell  and  all 
his  engines  striking  more  fiercely  at  it  every  day,  was 
occupied  with  sufficiently  puzzling  problems  at  home. 
When  its  enemies,  who  were,  of  course,  the  friends  of 
the  New  England  Puritans,  won  the  ascendency,  there 
was  nothing  to  prevent  a  firmer  rooting  of  all  the 
liberties  which  had  knit  themselves  into  the  Massa- 
chusetts soil  with  the  planting  of  Boston.  And  while 
this  process  was  going  forward,  the  tree  was  putting 


32  BOSTON 

forth  the  leaves  and  branches  which  fixed  its  outward 
form  for  many  years  to  come. 

In  how  much  of  this  John  Winthrop  bore  an  im- 
portant personal  part,  the  most  casual  scrutiny  of  the 
early  years  in  Boston  will  show.  Between  1630  and 
his  death  in  1649  ^^  ^^^  twelve  times  Governor, 
thrice  Deputy  Governor,  and,  for  the  few  years  not 
devoted  to  these  offices,  head  of  the  Board  of  Assist- 
ants. Through  all  this  time  he  served  Boston  herself 
as  the  chief  of  her  selectmen  and  in  other  capacities. 
It  was  a  simple  standard  of  living  which  his  own 
household  set  for  his  fellow-townsmen.  From  the 
steps  of  his  house  on  Washington  Street,  opposite  the 
foot  of  School  Street,  his  wife  thought  it  no  shame  to 
carry  her  pail  for  water  to  the  source  which  gave  Spring 
Lane  its  name.  Fearing  an  abuse  of  the  custom  of 
drinking  toasts,  Winthrop  banished  it  from  his  own 
table,  and  found,  as  he  hoped,  that  his  example  was 
followed  in  other  houses.  His  view  of  the  commu- 
nity at  large  was  that  "the  best  part  is  always  the  least, 
and  of  that  best  part  the  wiser  part  is  always  the  lesser." 
In  spite  of  this  austere  opinion  he  did  not  escape 
accusations  of  undue  lenity  and  laxity.  Once  when  he 
was  superseded  in  the  governorship  he  was  even  called 
upon  for  his  accounts ;  but  it  was  an  easy  matter  to 
show  that  his  expenditures  for  the  colony  had  exceeded 
his  receipts  from  it  by  ^^1200.  With  the  Deputy 
Governor,  Dudley,  his  relations  were  sometimes  peril- 
ously strained.  Yet  there  could  have  been  little  dan- 
ger of  a  permanent  alienation  of  the  two  friends  when 


COLONIAL    BOSTON  ^3 

Winthrop  could  return  a  peculiarly  irritating  letter 
with  no  comment  beyond  "  I  am  unwilling  to  keep 
such  an  occasion  of  provocation  by  me."  To  this 
Dudley  answered,  —  as  well  he  might,  —  "  Your  over- 
coming yourself  has  overcome  me."  When  all  the 
authorities  of  Boston  were  for  sending  the  trouble- 
some Roger  Williams  back  to  England,  it  was  the  pri- 
vate advice  of  Winthrop  which  landed  him  safe  on  the 
shores  of  Narragansett  Bay.  His  charity,  indeed,  lived 
to  the  very  end  of  his  own  life  —  for  when  to  his 
death-bed  Dudley  brought  an  order  for  the  banish- 
ment of  a  heterodox  person,  and  asked  for  Governor 
Winthrop^s  signature,  the  good  man  withheld  his  hand, 
saying  he  had  done  too  much  of  that  work  already. 
Mercy  and  justice  were  so  truly  blended  in  his  char- 
acter that  Hawthorne  could  write  of  him  with  perfect 
truth  as  "  a  man  by  whom  the  innocent  and  the  guilty 
might  alike  desire  to  be  judged ;  the  first  confiding  in 
his  integrity  and  wisdom,  the  latter  hoping  in  his  mild- 
ness." The  seventeenth-century  Boston  had  abun- 
dant reason  to  be  thankful  that  its  first  citizen  of  the 
chief  importance  was  such  an  one  as  Winthrop.  The 
subtler  effects  of  his  personal  headship  need  not  be 
traced.  But  let  us  note  a  few  of  the  good  undertakings 
in  which,  before  his  death  in  1649,  his  hand  was  felt. 

One  of  the  first  of  these  enterprises  was  the  purchase 
of  Boston  Common.  In  1633  the  town  had  set  aside 
fifty  acres  of  land,  near  the  house  of  William  Black- 
stone, —  which  stood  in  a  six-acre  lot  bounded  in  part 
by  the  present  lines  of  Beacon,  Spruce,  and  Pinckney 


34 


BOSTON 


streets  and  the  ancient  border  of  the  Charles  River,  — 
for  this  earliest  settler  "to  enjoy  forever."  But  his 
enjoyment  had  a  shorter  date  than  the  "lord-brethren  " 
of  Boston  —  from  whom  he  proceeded  to  flee  as  he 
had   fled    from    "  lord-bishops "   in   England  —  could 


Tremont  Street  and  the  Common,  about  1800. 

have  foreseen.  In  1634  he  rehnquished  all  his  rights 
in  the  peninsula,  excepting  the  six  acres  about  his 
house,  for  ;^30.  The  money  for  the  purchase  was 
raised  by  a  tax  on  all  the  householders,  who  con- 
tributed sums  from  six  shillings  upward.  Winthrop 
was  at  the  head  of  those  who  represented  the  town  in 
the  transaction.  Six  years  later,  in  1640,  it  was  agreed 
that  "  there  shall  be  no  land  granted  either  for  house- 
plot  or  garden  to  any  person  "  out  of  the  space  which 
with  its  boundaries  practically  unchanged  has  been 
the  scene  of  many  historic  dramas,  from  tragedy  to 
comedy,  and  is  still,  perhaps,  the  most  characteristic 
bit  in  the  landscape  of  Boston.  In  a  wider  range  of 
history  than  that  which  comprises  the  records  of  this 


COLONIAL   BOSTON 


35 


single  city,  a  more  profitable  investment  of  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  dollars  would  be  difficult  to  find. 

To  represent  the  continuity  of  things  in  Boston 
there  is  no  other  such  tangible  object  as  the  Com- 
mon ;  yet  the  beginning  of  the  story  of  free  schools 
carries  us  back  into  the  earliest  days  of  Winthrop's 
leadership  of  affairs.  The  antique  name  of  Philemon 
Pormort  (or  Pormont)  appears  even  in  the  records 
of  1633  as  "school-master  for  the  teaching  and 
nourtering  of  children  with  us."  In  1636  the  chief 
persons  of  the  place  set  themselves  down  as  sub- 
scribers, in  amounts  from  4.S.  to  ;^io,  "towards  the 
maintenance  of  free  schoolmaster."  From  the  school 
thus  provided  for,  the  Boston  Latin  School  traces 
direct  descent.  Its  unbroken  record  is  bright  with 
the  names  of  boys  preparing  for  manhood  of  the 
highest  local  and  national  significance. 

This  prompt  recognition  of  the  importance  of  free 
and  universal  education  was  inevitable  in  such  a  com- 
munity as  that  of  early  Boston.  Between  1630  and 
1647,  i^  h^s  been  estimated,  nearly  one  hundred  Uni- 
versity men  came  from  England  to  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Colony.  Forty  or  fifty  were  here  by  1639,  ^"^ 
of  those  it  is  said  that  one-half  established  themselves 
within  {ive  miles  of  Boston  or  Cambridge.  Though 
many  of  them  were  of  the  clergy,  a  fair  share  of  the 
number  belonged  to  the  laity.  Mr.  Henry  Cabot 
Lodge  has  shrewdly  pointed  out  the  difficulties  they 
might  well  have  foreseen  in  trying  to  nourish  their 
conflicting  principles  of  church,  state,  and   education 


26  BOSTON 

side  by  side.  But  fortunately  they  did  not  look  so 
far  ahead  as  to  reahze  that  of  the  three  principles,  the 
one  which  they  cherished  most  tenderly,  the  principle 
of  theocracy,  would  be  the  surest  to  give  place  to  the 
free  spirit  involved  in  untrammelled  learning.  In  1636 
they  founded  Harvard  College,  primarily  for  the  train- 
ing of  Christian  ministers  for  Indians  and  whites.  In 
1642  Winthrop  doubtless  rejoiced  to  record  in  his 
diary,  "  Nine  bachelors  commenced  at  Cambridge." 
With  them  "commenced"  an  influence  of  incalculable 
moment  in  fixing  the  Boston  temper  of  mind  through 
the  succeeding  generations.  But  this  Harvard  College 
—  "  first  flower  of  their  wilderness  "  —  belonged  to 
Boston  only  as  other  influences  which  have  spread  them- 
selves through  Massachusetts  and  all  the  states  belonged 
to  Boston ;  and  here  this  word  about  it  must  suffice. 

Another  institution  of  far  more  than  local  impor- 
tance was  the  New  England  Confederacy  —  or,  to  use 
its  own  name  for  itself, "  The  United  Colonies  of  New 
England."  The  four  colonies  of  Massachusetts  Bay, 
Plymouth,  Hartford,  and  New  Haven  had,  in  com- 
mon, too  much,  both  of  purpose  and  of  need,  to 
continue  long  in  utter  independence  of  one  another. 
Accordingly,  in  1643,  ^^^7  achieved  a  somewhat  loose 
union  "for  preserving  and  propagating  the  truth  and 
liberties  of  the  Gospel,  and  for  their  own  mutual  safety 
and  welfare."  More  than  for  anything  which  the 
league,  as  such,  accomplished,  it  has  its  historic  inter- 
est in  its  foreshadowing  of  our  own  federal  scheme 
of  government.    A  detailed  study  of  its  Articles  would 


COLONIAL   BOSTON  37 

show  that  in  more  than  one  particular  this  early  instru- 
ment of  colonial  federation  might  have  served  as  a 
model  with  those  who  framed  the  union  of  our  states. 
From  1643  to  1684,  only  a  short  time  before  the 
coming  of  Andros  as  governor  of  all  New  England, 
the  Confederacy  maintained  its  existence.  Boston 
from  the  first  was  the  capital  town,  in  fact  if  not 
in  name,  of  the  territory  thus  bound  together ;  and  in 
its  citizens  the  constant  spectacle  of  this  simple  work- 
ing machinery  of  union  may  well  have  brought  into 
being  something  like  a  national  consciousness. 

The  Confederacy  was  but  six  years  old  when  Win- 
throp,  his  good  work  well  done,  quitted  the  scene. 
To  understand  the  contrast  between  the  place  as  he 
found  it  and  as  he  left  it,  we  cannot  do  better  than 
to  turn  to  a  frequently  quoted  passage  in  Johnson^s 
Wonder- Working  Providence  describing  the  town  in 
1650.  When  the  colonists  landed,  "the  hideous 
thickets  in  this  place  were  such  that  Wolfes  &  Beares 
nurst  up  their  young  from  the  eyes  of  all  beholders, 
in  those  very  places  where  the  streets  are  full  of  Girles 
&  Boys  sporting  up  &  downe,  with  a  continual  con- 
course of  people."  Of  the  building  which  before  1650 
had  taken  place  on  the  shore  of  the  bay,  Johnson  says, 
"  The  chiefe  Edifice  of  this  City-like  Towne  is  crowded 
on  the  Sea-bankes,  and  wharfed  out  with  great  in- 
dustry &  cost,  the  buildings  beautiful  &  large,  some 
fairely  set  forth  with  Brick,  Tile,  Stone,  &  Slate,  whose 
continuall  inlargement  presages  some  sumptuous  City." 
Twenty  years  had  wrought  a  change  indeed  from  the 


38  BOSTON 

appearance  of  the  barren  promontory  which  an  earlier 
traveller  had  been  able  to  commend  in  at  least  these 
words  :  "  It  being  a  necke  and  bare  of  wood :  they 
are  not  troubled  with  three  great  annoyances  of 
Woolves,  Rattle-snakes,  and  Musketoes."  Possibly 
Johnson  overpopulated  his  hideous  thickets. 

But  the  treeless  promontory  in  1650  was  of  course 
immeasurably  nearer  its  primeval  form  than  anything 
we  can  trace  in  its  outlines  to-day.  The  word  peninsula 
describes  it  less  promptly  to  our  ears  than  the  English 
equivalent  —  "almost  an  island,"  with  a  strong  empha- 
sis on  the  qualifying  term.  Where  Washington  Street 
now  winds  its  way  north  and  south  of  Dover  Street, 
"  the  Neck,"  even  up  to  the  century  just  past,  stretched 
across  broad  tidal  waters  to  connect  Boston  with  Rox- 
bury.  As  the  wayfarer  across  this  strip  of  land  looked 
toward  Boston,  he  saw  something  very  different  from 
the  comparatively  flat  expanse  now  covered  by  the 
main  city.  In  addition  to  the  three-peaked  hill  of 
Trimountaine,  other  eminences  rose  less  conspicuous. 
Where  Fort  Hill  Square  is  now  surrounded  by  level 
streets  of  trade.  Fort  Hill  itself  appeared.  Where 
Copp's  Hill  Burying-ground  is  now  more  noticeable 
for  its  graves  than  for  any  elevation  in  the  landscape, 
the  height  which  took  its  earlier  name  of  Windmill 
Hill  from  the  structure  on  its  summit  rose  abruptly 
from  the  water.  Under  all  these  hills  and  skirting  the 
harbor,  a  shore-line  even  more  unlike  that  of  the 
present  day  fixed  the  seaward  boundary  of  the  town. 
Reaching  far  into  districts   now  covered    by  business 


COLONIAL   BOSTON 


39 


buildings,  tenement-houses,  and  the  residences  of  the 
better  sort,  deep  coves  extended  into  the  land.  From 
time  to  time,  as  the  generations  have  come  and  gone, 
the  "  continuall  inlargement "  which  presaged  "  some 
sumptuous  City "  has  been 
carried  forward  by  the  cutting 
down  of  the  hills  and  the  fill- 
ing up  of  the  waters  with  the 
dry  land  thus  placed  at  the  dis- 
posal of  man.  During  the 
seventeenth  century,  the  early 
saints,  of  whom  Emerson  re- 
ported the  saying  that  "  they 
had  to  hold  on  to  the  huckle- 
berry bushes  to  hinder  them- 
selves from  being  translated," 
had  work  enough  in  planting 
their  houses  where  the  huckle- 
berries had  grown. 

But  while  they  were  so 
doing  they  abated  in  no  wise 
their  activities  as  saints.  Non- 
conformists as  they  had  been 
in  England,  they  continued  to 
exact  the  strictest  conformity 
to  their  own  ecclesiastical  methods.  The  banishment 
of  Roger  Williams  and  the  severity  against  Quakers 
were  among  the  most  patent  evidences  of  this  rigidity 
of  rule.  These  instances,  however,  might  be  held  up 
to  show  no  less  clearly  the  inextricable  tangling  of  civil 


Roger  Williams. 

Statue  by  Franklin  Simmons,  at 

Providence,  R.I. 


40 


BOSTON 


and  ecclesiastical  affairs.  Williams  was  banished  as  a 
disturber  rather  of  the  secular  than  of  the  religious 
peace,  because  he  had  "  broached  and  divulged  new  and 
dangerous  opinions  against  the  authority  of  magistrates, 
as  also  writ  letters  of  defamation,  both  of  the  magis- 
trates and  churches  here/'  This  sentence  of  banish- 
ment, by  the  way,  was  rescinded  in  1676,  although  the 
fact  did  not  become  generally  known  until  1900,  when 
certain  enthusiasts  for  freedom  of  opinion  sought  to 
have  the  decree  removed  from  the  Massachusetts  rec- 
ords. In  Rhode  Island,  whither  Roger  Williams  had 
gone,  as  Cotton  Mather  said,  with  "  a  wind-mill  in  his 
head,"  and  where,  according  to  the  same  authority  any- 
body who  had  lost  a  conscience  might  find  one  to  suit 
him,  the  Quakers,  too,  sought  refuge.  Regarding 
them  solely  as  offenders  against  civil  order,  the  Puritans 
certainly  had  a  just  quarrel  with  the  religious  fanatics 
who  walked  naked  through  the  public  streets,  appeared 
in  the  churches  in  sackcloth  and  ashes,  with  blackened 
faces,  and  clashed  empty  bottles  together,  calling  down 
the  wrath  of  heaven  upon  the  people.  Such  conduct 
as  this  deserved  some  punishment,  but  the  rancorous 
infliction  of  stripes,  fines,  banishment,  and  threats  of 
death  was  something  to  shift  one's  sympathy  quickly 
from  the  persecutors  to  the  persecuted.  The  threat 
of  execution  in  store  for  these  violent  precursors  of 
the  gentle  folk  we  know  as  Friends  was  reserved  for 
those  who  insisted  upon  returning  from  banishment. 
The  magistrates  may  have  "  desired  their  hves  absent 
rather  than  their  deaths  present "  ;  but  three  men  and 


COLONIAL    BOSTON  41 

a  woman  courted  death  at  the  hands  of  the   Boston 
magistrates,  and  won  it. 

Their  executions  took  place  between  1659  and  1661. 
To  witness  the  hanging  of  Marmaduke  Stevenson  and 
WilUam  Robinson,  who  in  1659  were  marched  to  the 
gallows  behind  drums  which  drowned  their  voices 
whenever  they  tried  to  speak,  so  many  persons  had 
thronged  to  the  Common  from  the  North  End  that, 
as  they  returned  home,  the  drawbridge  across  the 
marsh  which  made  the  North  End  practically  an 
island  broke  down  beneath  their  weight.  On  the 
Common  these  sight-seers  had  heard  the  Rev.  John 
Wilson  railing  against  the  culprits  to  the  last,  and  had 
witnessed  the  dramatic  release  of  a  Quakeress,  Mary 
Dyer,  condemned  to  die  with  the  men.  The  hang- 
man's rope  was  already  passed  round  her  neck  when 
the  urgent  appeal  of  her  son  won  her  the  alternative 
sentence  of  banishment  from  the  colony ;  but  in  less 
than  a  year  she  returned,  and  paid  the  postponed 
penalty  of  death.  In  March  of  1661,  the  fourth  vic- 
tim, one  Leddra,  suffered  the  same  punishment.  In 
the  ground  of  the  Common,  where  these  misbelievers 
died,  their  bodies  were  buried.  At  a  later  and  safer 
day,  long  after  Shattuck  the  Salem  Quaker  in  1661 
had  brought  to  Governor  Endicott  King  Charles's 
order  to  have  all  Quakers  awaiting  punishment  sent 
to  England  for  trial,  the  Boston  Quakers  asked  per- 
mission to  put  a  pahng  round  the  four  graves  on  the 
Common.  This  was  held  to  be  "  very  inconvenient," 
and    nothing   beyond    the  enclosure  of  a  few  feet  of 


42  BOSTON 

ground  with  boards  was  permitted.  By  this  time, 
1685,  the  Quakers  were  firmly  enough  established  to 
have  had  a  regular  place  of  worship  for  seven  years ; 
and  before  the  end  of  the  century  they  built  for  their 
own  use  in  Brattle  Street  the  first  brick  meeting-house 
in  Boston.  Yet  it  may  be  added  that  a  Quaker  trav- 
eller, visiting  Boston  as  late  as  1693,  reported  "the 
barbarous  and  unchristian-Hke  welcome  "  he  received. 
" '  O  !  what  a  pity  it  was,'  said  one,  '  that  all  of  your 
society  were  not  hanged  with  the  other  four.'  "  Appar- 
ently there  were  lessons  both  of  tolerance  and  of  good 
manners  to  be  learned  in  Boston. 

The  Quaker  disturbance,  acute  though  it  was,  had 
at  least  the  virtue  of  being  short-lived.  Its  four 
victims  who  came  to  the  gallows  died  within  the  space 
of  three  years.  Between  the  first  and  the  last  execu- 
tion for  witchcraft  in  Boston  forty  years  elapsed. 
The  first  of  all  came  during  Winthrop's  governorship, 
in  1648.  Within  the  next  eight  years  two  more  lives 
were  sacrificed  to  the  strangest  delusion  which  ever 
brought  the  powers  of  darkness  and  the  fate  of  mortals 
together.  For  more  than  thirty  years  from  that  time, 
no  other  victim  came  to  the  Boston  scaffold.  Soon 
after  Goody  Glover  was  executed  in  1688,  the  hideous 
history  of  the  witchcraft  mania  in  New  England  passed, 
happily  for  Boston,  into  the  history  of  Salem.  With 
it,  unhappily  for  Boston,  passed  such  Boston  names  as 
those  of  Cotton  Mather  and  of  Samuel  Sewall  who  for 
one  had  the  grace,  when  the  harm  was  done,  to  stand 
up  in   meeting  of  his  own    free  will  and  "  take  the 


COLONIAL    BOSTON  43 

blame  and  shame  of  it."  To  the  credit  of  Boston 
itself  it  should  be  said  that  "spectral  evidence"  was 
not  accepted,  as  in  the  Salem  trials,  against  persons 
accused  of  witchcraft ;  and  that  the  method  of  treating 
the  two  notable  cases  of  Mercy  Short  and  Margaret 
Rule  by  the  sole  spiritual  weapon  of  prayer  was  that 
which  came  to  distinguish  the  Boston  from  the  Salem 
mode  of  procedure.  But  even  if  the  story  of  New 
England  witchcraft  were  to  be  retold  in  the  pages  of 
this  book,  its  chief  events  belong  to  a  later  time  than 
that  with  which  the  present  chapter  deals.  Here  we 
may  leave  the  matter  in  the  light  of  a  few  figures.  It 
has  been  estimated  that  during  the  years  of  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries  in  which  the  minds 
of  men  were  inflamed  against  witches  and  witchcraft, 
the  executions  in  Germany  numbered  one  hundred 
thousand,  in  France  seventy-five  thousand,  and  in 
Great  Britain  thirty  thousand.  The  other  countries 
of  Europe  contributed  their  proportionate  shares. 
Against  these  may  be  set  the  thirty-two  victims  of 
New  England,  four  of  whom  were  provided  by  the 
town  of  Boston.  The  wonder  is  not  that  we  hear  so 
much  of  the  early  American  witch-killers,  but  that  so 
little  is  said  about  their  European  forerunners  and 
contemporaries. 

Upon  the  whole  matter  of  early  New  England 
harshness,  so  to  call  it,  we  are  prone  to  look  through 
"  near  "  rather  than  "  far  "  glasses.  We  recoil  with 
horror  from  the  thought  of  a  scarlet  letter  A,  or  the 
D  hung  for  a  year  round  the  neck  of  a  drunkard. 


44  BOSTON 

The  punishment  of  one  Captain  Kemble  who  had  to 
sit  for  two  hours  in  the  stocks  for  kissing  his  wife 
publicly  on  the  Sabbath  Day,  when  he  first  saw  her 
after  an  absence  of  three  years,  has  its  droll  no  less 
than  its  painful  aspect.  The  idea  of  bringing  con- 
demned criminals  to  divine  service  on  Sunday  and  to 
the  Thursday  Lecture  for  exposure  to  a  visual  appli- 
cation of  text  and  sermon  in  a  crowded  meeting-house 
provokes  both  sympathy  and  repugnance.  We  shud- 
der at  the  list  of  twelve  offences  punishable  under 
the  Massachusetts  "  Body  of  Liberties "  by  death ; 
but  we  forget  that  in  England  at  the  same  time  a 
sinner  might  lose  his  life  by  committing  any  one  of 
a  hundred  and  fifty  sins.  In  point  of  austerity  in  ad- 
ministering justice,  the  seventeenth-century  Bostonian 
was,  indeed,  very  much  a  man  of  his  time  —  with 
contemporary  faults  and  virtues,  blended  in  special 
proportions  but  drawn  from  the  general  supply  of 
good  and  ill.  In  Hawthorne's  characterization  of 
Endico'tt,  "  who  would  stand  with  his  drawn  sword  at 
the  gate  of  heaven,  and  resist  to  the  death  all  pilgrims 
thither,  except  they  travelled  his  own  path,"  we  find  a 
memorable  suggestion  of  the  chief  and  distinguishing 
fault,  if  such  it  be,  of  the  race  of  New  England 
Puritans. 

Men  of  their  time  in  most  respects,  the  Boston 
Puritans,  as  colonists,  stood  in  advance  of  it.  If  their 
provision  for  free  education  showed  the  guidance  of  an 
enlightened  few,  the  record  of  their  printing,  buying, 
and  reading  of  books  tells  something  of  the  intelligent 


John  Eliot  preaching  to  the  Indians. 
Mural  Painting  by  Henry  O.  Walker,  in  the  State-house. 


%, 


COLONIAL    BOSTON  47 

many.  For  a  long  time,  to  be  sure,  the  work  of 
printing,  begun  in  Cambridge  in  1639,  ^^^  afterwards 
confined  by  law  to  that  place,  was  not  taken  up  in 
Boston  itself  It  was  not  until  1674  that  John  Foster 
displayed  his  "Sign  of  a  Dove"  and  became  the  first 
Boston  printer.  Before  the  loss  of  the  charter  Boston 
and  Cambridge  together  printed  some  three  hundred 
publications,  of  which,  of  course,  the  greater  number 
were  theological.  But  as  early  as  1652  Hezekiah 
Usher  was  a  bookseller  in  the  town.  By  1673  there 
was  a  public  library  to  which  John  Oxenbridge  could 
bequeath  his  books  —  as  John  Harvard  and  John 
Winthrop  had  earlier  left  theirs  to  the  library  of 
the  college.  When  Dunton,  a  London  bookseller, 
brought  over  an  assortment  of  books  for  sale  in 
1685,  he  found  five  dealers  already  established  in  the 
place.  All  these  would  be  dry  facts  were  they  not 
significant  of  an  intellectual  activity  not  usually  found 
in  seventeenth-century  colonies.  Since  the  men  of 
Boston  began  so  promptly  to  provide  themselves  with 
books,  what  wonder  that  their  Beacon  Hill  has  in 
later  years  appeared  as 

«'a  tall  mountain,  citied  to  the  top. 
Crowded  with  culture  ' '  ? 

While  books  were  extending  the  inner  vision,  the 
powerful  agency  of  commerce  was  at  its  work  of 
broadening  the  outward  horizon.  A  lively  trade  with 
other  parts  of  New  England,  with  all  the  more  south- 
erly colonies,  and  with  the  Frenchmen  to  the  north, 


48  BOSTON 

carried  Boston  boats  and  Boston  men  far  from  their 
own  wharves.  In  the  French  colonies  Boston,  or 
Baston,  as  the  word  came  to  be  written,  was  used  in 
so  broad  a  sense  that  the  men  of  all  Massachusetts, 
indeed  the  English  colonists  in  general,  found  them- 
selves described  as  "  Bostonnais."  It  may  be  through 
a  survival  of  this  very  usage  that  the  Canadians  and 
Indians  of  the  Pacific  coast  have  defined  Americans  as 
Bostons  up  to  our  own  day. 

It  were  well  if  some  record  of  the  names  which  the 
Indians  of  eastern  Massachusetts  called  the  men  of 
early  Boston  could  be  unearthed.  In  the  absence 
of  Indian  historians  we  have  to  be  content  with  a 
one-sided  story.  There  is  every  evidence  that  the 
original  intentions  of  the  colonists  with  regard  to  the 
Indians  were  eminently  Christian.  In  the  precious 
charter  itself  the  colonists  were  counted  upon  to 
"  winne  and  incite  the  natives  of  that  country  to  the 
knowledge  and  obedience  of  the  only  true  God  and 
Saviour  of  mankind  and  the  christian  faith,  which  is 
our  royall  intention  and  the  adventurers  free  profes- 
sion is  the  principall  end  of  this  plantation."  In  spite 
of  this  profession  there  seems  to  be  a  reasonable  doubt 
whether  so  many  Englishmen  would  have  come  to  the 
new  world  at  all  but  for  their  belief  that  a  pestilence 
had  recently  taken  a  large  number  of  the  red  men  out 
of  their  way.  They  doubtless  believed,  moreover, 
that  the  Christian  religion  would  recommend  itself 
more  promptly  and  generally  to  the  savages.  If 
there  had  been  more  white  men  like  the  "  Apostle  " 


COLONIAL    BOSTON  49 

John  Eliot  of  Roxbury,  who  estabHshed  at  Natick 
his  village  of  "praying  Indians,"  —  a  shining  example 
of  the  best  missionary  work,  —  the  performances  of  the 
white  men  might  have  talHed  better  with  their  inten- 
tions. 

As  it  was,  Boston  had  to  send  its  quota  of  men  to  a 
Pequot  war  in  Connecticut  before  the  town  was  seven 
years  old.  When  the  Indians  refused  to  turn  from 
certain  ignorance  to  the  uncertain  choice  between 
the  Calvinist  heaven  or  hell,  the  colonists  had  little 
difficulty  in  persuading  themselves  that  "  the  enemies 
of  the  Puritans"  —  in  the  words  of  Dr.  George  E. 
Ellis  —  "  were  the  enemies  of  God."  The  new  coun- 
try could  not  become  God's  country  until  the  devil's 
people  were  removed  from  it ;  and  since  God's  work 
could  not  be  done  through  conversion,  it  must  be 
wrought  by  the  sword. 

King  Philip's  War,  culminating  in  1676,  was  the 
inevitable  result  of  these  conditions.  Before  its  out- 
break, Philip  told  the  Apostle  EHot  that  he  cared  no 
more  for  his  religion  than  for  the  apostolic  coat- 
button  he  held  in  his  fingers  —  and  earned  for  him- 
self Cotton  Mather's  epithet  of  a  "  blasphemous 
Leviathan."  When  the  Indian  chieftain  lay  dead 
at  Mount  Hope  he  was  no  more  to  Captain  Benjamin 
Church,  who  led  the  English  against  him,  than  "  a 
doleful,  great,  naked,  dirty  beast."  Yet  the  war 
which  he  had  waged  had  threatened  the  very  con- 
tinuance of  the  whites  in  New  England.  Even  at 
the  time  it  was  estimated  that  if  he  had  had  the  help 


so 


BOSTON 


of  the  3000  Indians  who  had  submitted  in  greater  and 
less  degree  to  the  influences  of  civilization,  the  English 
would  have  been  exterminated.  Within  three  hours 
of  the  first  call  to   arms  Boston   mustered   no  men 

to  go  forth  into  the  Plymouth  colony  and  Rhode 
Island  where  the  conflict  chiefly  raged.  Throughout 
the  war  she  bore  her  part  with  all  the  valor  which  was 
needed  even  against  foes  who  could  be  terrified  by  the 
aspect  of  one  soldier  in  the  armor  he  had  worn  under 
Cromwell,  or  of  another  who  hung  his  wig  on  a  tree 
that  he  might  fight  more  coolly,  but  appeared  to  the 
Indians  as  a  marvellous  creature  who  stood  in  no  need 
of  scalping.  With  all  their  might  the  men  of  Boston 
helped  to  keep  King  Philip's  War  at  a  safe  distance 
from  their  wives  and  children,  and  fighting,  as  they 
thought,  for  God  and  the  church,  bore  themselves  like 
true  members  of  the  church  militant. 

Since  the  Puritan  church  was  militant,  so,  of  course, 
was  its  other  half,  the  state.  Immediately  before  and 
after  King  Philip's  War  its  conflict  was  with  the 
crown.  We  have  already  seen  how  the  supremacy  of 
Cromwell  put  a  stop  to  the  bout  of  long- armed  fencing 
over  the  charter.  More  than  this,  the  Massachusetts 
colony  had  taken  the  opportunity  to  intrench  itself 
almost  as  an    independent  state.      When  CromwelFs 


COLONIAL   BOSTON 


51 


Navigation  Act  proved  disadvantageous  to  the  colony, 
the  colony  disregarded  it ;  and  Cromwell,  fri-endly  to 
the  Puritans  and  busy  with  his  enemies,  made  no  ob- 
jection. When  the  colony  thought  it  needed  money 
of  its  own,  it  took  the  self-sufficient  step,  in  1652,  of 
setting  up  its  own  coinage.  "  No  other  colony,"  says 
Hutchinson,  "  ever  presumed  to  coin  any  metal  into 
money.  It  must  be  considered  that  at  this  time  there 
was  no  king  in  Israel."  The  charter  under  which  such 
courses  were  even  possible  was  obviously  growing  less 
and  less  a  thing  to  be  surrendered. 

After  a  king  had  returned  to  Israel,  and  the  second 
Charles  came  to  his  own  in  1660,  he  is  said  to  have 
looked  at  one  of  the  pine  tree  shillings,  and  to  have  mis- 
taken John  Hull's  famous  mintage  for  a  well-meaning 
reproduction  of  the  royal  oak.  Still  more  flattering  to 
kingly  pride  may  have  been  the  Address  which  came  to 
him  promptly  from  Boston.  The  colonists  called  them- 
selves "  your  poor  Mephibo- 
sheths."  Trusting  "  that  he 
knoweth  the  hearts  of  exiles, 
who  himself  hath  been  an 
exile,"  they  declared  humbly, 
yet  elaborately  enough,  that 

"  the   aspect^  of  majesty  thus  ^ing  Philip's  bowl. 

extraordinarily  circumstanced       in  possession  of  the  Massachusetts 

influenceth     and     animateth  Historical  society. 

exanimated  outcasts,"  and  prayed  for  his  royal  grace. 
But  with  this  attitude  of  the  colonists  came  also  the 
opportunity  of  their,  enemies  —  neither  few  nor  feeble 


52 


BOSTON 


—  to  make  complaints.  The  royal  oak  on  the  shilling 
was  shown  to  be  an  unwarranted  pine  tree  ;  the  harbor- 
ing of  the  regicides  Goffe  and  Whalley,  and  the  over- 
stepping of  various  chartered  rights,  were  set  forth  in 
their  most  disloyal  significance.  Through  agents  sent 
to  England  from  Boston,  the  King  gave  orders  looking 
toward  a  real  extension  of  civil  and  religious  liberty, 
and  they  were  grudgingly  obeyed. 
Then,  in  1664,  the  crown  despatched 
four  Commissioners  to  look  into 
the  affairs  of  all  the  New  England 
colonies.  In  Connecticut,  Rhode 
Island,  and  Plymouth  they  were 
satisfactorily  received.  In  Boston 
it  was  different.  The  Commission- 
ers and  the  Court,  representing  the 
colony,  soon  found  themselves  in  a 
snarl.  At  the  end  of  a  month  the 
Commissioners  asked,  "  Do  you 
acknowledge  his  Majesty's  Com- 
mission to  be  of  full  force  to  all 
the  intents  and  purposes  therein 
contained  ?  "  And  the  Court  replied,  "We  humbly 
conceive  it  is  beyond  our  line  to  declare  our  sense  of 
the  power,  intent,  or  purpose  of  your  Commission.  It 
is  enough  for  us  to  acquaint  you  what  we  conceive  is 
granted  to  us  by  his  Majesty's  royal  charter.  If  you 
rest  not  satisfied  with  our  former  answer,  it  is  our 
trouble,  but  we  hope  it  is  not  our  fault."  The  Com- 
missioners  saw   the   futility   of  further  parleying  and 


Pine  Tree  Shillings. 


COLONIAL   BOSTON  S3 

departed.  Two  years  later  the  King  called  upon  the 
colony' to  send  four  or  five  persons  to  England  for  a 
conference  upon  the  vexed  questions.  But  when  the 
letter  bearing  these  instructions  came  without  direction 
or  seal,  the  Court  made  the  most  of  this  omission,  and 
excused  itself  from  acceding  to  the  royal  wish.  Carry- 
ing its  suaviter  in  modo  principle  even  further,  the  colony 
not  long  afterwards  presented  the  King  with  a  shipload 
of  masts,  which  were  gratefully  accepted. 

So  the  unequal  conflict  went  on.  There  is  no  occa- 
sion to  follow  in  detail  the  devoted  efforts  of  the 
colony's  agents  in  London,  and  all  the  machinations 
of  Edward  Randolph,  "the  evil  genius  of  New  Eng- 
land," against  the  "  Bostoneers."  From  the  time,  in 
1664,  when  the  colony  was  obliged  to  repeal  the  law 
restricting  the  franchise  to  members  of  the  Puritan 
churches,  it  must  have  been  clear  that  the  theocracy 
was  doomed.  But  its  death  struggle  lasted  for  more 
than  twenty  years.  In  October  of  1684  the  Court  of 
Chancery  declared  the  charter  of  the  Massachusetts 
Bay  Company  vacated.  In  November  of  1685  Samuel 
Sewall  recorded  in  his  diary  the  sober  declaration  of 
a  Boston  minister,  discussing  with  his  brethren  the 
appearance  of  a  dancing  master  in  the  town,  that 
"'twas  not  a  time  for  N.  E.  to  dance."  In  May  of 
1686  the  Rose  frigate,  bearing  the  detested  Randolph 
with  commissions  for  the  new  administrators  of  a  new 
rule,  sailed  into  the  harbor,  —  and  the  government 
under  which  Boston  as  a  chartered  colony  had  been 
founded  and  firmly  established  was  forever  at  an  end. 


Ill 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON 


BETWEEN  the  end  of  the 
colony  and  the  beginning  of 
the  royal  province  Boston  passed 
through  a  brief  and  exciting  pe- 
riod of  transition.  For  the  first 
seven  months  of  it,  Joseph  Dud- 
ley, under  royal  appointment, 
filled  the  provisional  presidency 
of  New  England.  Both  now,  and 
in  his  later  governorship,  Dudley 
owed  much  of  his  unpopularity 
to  the  fact  that  as  the  son  of 
Winthrop's  contemporary,  Gov- 
ernor Thomas  Dudley,  he  was 
regarded  as  one  who  should  be 
standing  with  the  people  against 
the  crown  instead  of  taking  the 
contrary  position.  During  the  six  months  of  his 
presidency  it  was  not  his  least  offence  that  he  aided 
and  abetted  the  Episcopalians  in  securing  the  east  end 
of  the  Town  House  as  their  first  place  of  worship  in 
Boston.  But  a  harder  trial  than  seeing  any  secular 
building  put  to  this  use  was  yet  to  come.  In  all  the 
circumstances  it  is  little  wonder  that  the  English  clergy- 

54 


The  Cross  captured  at 
louisburg, 

In  possession  of  Harvard 
University. 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  ^S 

man,  according  to  Randolph,  was  denounced  as  "  Baal's 
priest,"  and  that  Boston  ministers,  inheriting  an  accu- 
mulated prejudice  against  the  established  church,  de- 
scribed its  prayers  as  "  leeks,  garlick,  and  trash." 

In  December  of  1686  the  arrival  of  the  fvig3.te  King- 
jisher  in  Boston  harbor  marked  the  end  of  Dudley's 
presidency,  for  its  all-important  passenger  was  Sir 
Edmund  Andros,  bearing  the  royal  commission  of 
Governor  of  New  England.  When  James  II.  was 
the  Duke  of  York,  Andros  had  served  him  well  as 
ruler  of  his  province  of  New  York.  In  other  posts, 
military  and  civil,  Andros  had  shown  himself  a  faith- 
ful and  efficient  royalist.  His  appointment  to  the 
vacant  governorship  was  therefore  most  natural.  In 
early  American  history  his  name  has  become  a  byword 
for  royal  oppression.  It  may  be  doubted,  however, 
whether  anybody  sent  at  this  time  to  do  the  work 
committed  to  Andros  could  have  satisfied  the  people 
of  Boston,  smarting  under  the  loss  of  their  first 
charter,  suspicious  of  all  control  from  England,  and 
as  yet  without  assurance  of  any  permanent  form  of 
government,  good  or  bad.  Yet  Andros  might  at 
least  have  begun  his  administration  more  tactfully. 

Not  content  with  Dudley's  appropriation  of  a  por- 
tion of  the  Town  House  for  services  of  the  established 
church,  Andros  must  needs  invade  one  of  the  very 
temples  of  the  Puritans.  He  had  not  been  long  in 
Boston  when  he  inspected  the  three  existing  meeting- 
houses, and  decided  that  the  South  would  suit  his 
purpose  best.     Utterly  against    the    will    of  its    pro- 


^6  BOSTON 

prietors  he  took  possession  of  it  on  the  Good  Friday 
following  his  arrival,  and  had  the  English  service  con- 
ducted within  its  walls.  This  was  bad  enough,  but 
the  distress  of  the  people  must  have  reached  a  pain- 
ful chmax  on  Easter  Sunday  when  the  churchmen  kept 
the  Puritans  waiting  nearly  an  hour  outside  their  own 
doors  until  the  established  worship  of  England  should 
cease  and  that  of  Boston  could  begin.  " 'Twas  a  sad 
sight,"  wrote  Sewall,  "  to  see  how  full  the  street  was 
with  people,  gazing  and  moving  to  and  fro,  because 
[they]  had  not  entrance  into. the  house." 

That  nothing  might  be  lacking  to  offend  the  people 
he  had  come  to  govern,  Andros  treated  them  quite  as 
cavalierly  in  temporal  matters  as  in  spiritual.  The 
landholders  of  the  colony  he  declared  to  be  mere  ten- 
ants at  will.  As  a  loyal  servant  of  the  crown  he  main- 
tained that  since  their  lands  had  been  held  under  a 
royal  charter,  and  since  that  charter  had  been  with- 
drawn, their  titles  were  at  the  same  time  forfeited. 
Thus,  not  only  was  their  ecclesiastical  structure,  built 
with  pious  care,  dangerously  threatened,  but  the  very 
lands  on  which  they  and  their  houses  stood  seemed 
slipping  from  beneath  their  feet.  It  could  hardly  have 
helped  matters  for  the  colonists  to  familiarize  them- 
selves with  the  obverse  of  the  Great  Seal  of  New  Eng- 
land used  by  Andros  ;  for  here  were  depicted  a  white 
man  and  an  Indian  kneeling  with  gifts  before  a  king, 
while  over  their  heads  a  cherub  flaunted  a  Latin 
legend,  "  A  more  pleasing  liberty  has  never  existed." 

Even  if  Andros  through  the  two  years  and  more  of 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON 


57 


his  administration  had  devoted  himself  otherwise  to 
none  but  conciliatory  measures,  these  two  courses 
would  have  inflamed  the  people  against  him.  They 
were  quite  ready  and  eager,  then,  to  accept  as  true  the 
rumors  brought  in  April  of  1689  by  a  traveller  from 
Nevis  that  James  II  had  yielded  up  his  throne  to 
William  of  Orange  and 
Mary.  If  the  King  whom 
Andros  had  served  was 
overthrown,  so  must  An- 
dros be  himself.  Early  in 
the  morning  of  April  18 
the  people  of  the  North 
End  of  the  town  heard 
that  those  of  the  South 
End  were  up  in  arms.  At 
the  South  End  the  same 
report  of  the  North  was 
spread.  The  consequence  was  that  each  rallied  to 
help  the  other ;  at  the  same  time  many  troops  came 
in  from  the  country.  Royalist  officials  were  seized. 
Andros  promptly  betook  himself  to  the  fort  on  Castle 
Island,  now  the  site  of  Fort  Independence ;  but  when 
it  appeared  quite  useless  to  resist  the  people's  demand 
for  it  and  him,  "  it  was  surrendered  up  to  them  with 
cursings."  The  Governor  himself  was  made  a  prisoner, 
and  a  provisional  government,  based  upon  the  old 
charter,  was  established.  More  than  a  month  later  the 
authentic  news  of  the  accession  of  William  and  Mary 
was  received.     In  due  time  came  royal  orders  to  return 


From  the  Great  Seal  of  New 
England. 


58  BOSTON 

Sir  Edmund  with  some  of  his  friends  to  England,  and 
to  continue  the  provisional  government  for  the  present. 
With  these  mandates  there  was  no  unwillingness  to  com- 
ply, and  for  a  time  the  people  of  Boston  found  them- 
selves practically  in  possession  of  all  their  accustomed 
privileges.  So  spontaneous,  effective,  and  bloodless  a 
revolution  has  rarely  been  accomplished.  Whatever 
its  meaning  may  have  been  to  those  who  were  con- 
cerned in  it,  we  may  fairly  regard  it  to-day  as.  the  first 
step  toward  that  vastly  greater  uprising  which  has 
made  the  word  Revolution  mean  but  one  thing  in 
American  history.  But  the  whole  provincial  period 
was  yet  to  intervene.  It  was  not  till  1691  that  Massa- 
chusetts was  definitely  established  a  royal  province. 
Before  the  overthrow  of  Andros,  Increase  Mather, 
eluding  the  vigilance  of  his  enemy  Randolph,  had 
slipped  away  to  England  to  plead  the  restoration  of 
the  original  charter,  or  faihng  of  that,  to  secure  the 
best  form  of  government  that  could  be  got  in  its  place. 
The  record  of  his  work  in  England,  where  he  attained 
to  his  mother's  ambition  that  he  should  become  "  a 
man  diligent  in  business "  and  so  "  stand  before 
kings,"  is  not  to  be  retold  in  these  pages.  What  may 
be  noticed  here  is  that  the  man  chosen  sixty  years  after 
the  founding  of  the  colony  to  speak  for  it  in  England, 
the  man  who  did  so  in  interviews  with  two  kings,  and 
in  adroit  negotiations  with  politicians  and  courtiers,  was 
the  leading  minister  of  Boston,  the  son  of  one  minis- 
ter, the  son-in-law  of  no  less  another  than  the  great 
John  Cotton,  —  in  a  word  one  who  in  himself  and  all 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON  59 

his  associations  represented  the  old  theocratic  principle 
of  New  England.  What  this  Puritan  priest  and  states- 
man brought  back  with  him  to  Boston  in  1692  was  as 
good  a  substitute  for  the  old  charter  as  the  unfavoring 
conditions  would  permit ;  and  he  secured,  moreover,  a 
governor  of  his  own  choosing.  He  could  not  prevent 
the  change  from  colony  to  province,  with  a  governor 
and  lieutenant-governor  of  royal  appointment,  or  the 
governor's  privilege  of  vetoing  and  rejecting  impor- 
tant actions  of  the  legislature  to  be  chosen  by  the 
people ;  but  he  could  and  did  secure  the  incorporation 
of  Maine,  Nova  Scotia,  and  the  old  Plymouth  colony 
into  the  Province  of  Massachusetts  ;  and  the  first  of 
the  royal  governors.  Sir  William  Phips,  a  native  of 
New  England,  owed,  and  was  not  expected  to  forget 
that  he  owed,  his  office  to  Increase  Mather. 

Not  only  as  the  first  of  the  ten  acting  governors 
under  the  province  charter,  but  also  on  account  of  his 
own  picturesque  career.  Sir  William  Phips  deserves 
something  more  than  cursory  notice.  His  father  was 
a  gunsmith,  near  the  mouth  of  the  Kennebec,  in 
Maine,  whose  children,  of  one  mother,  were  said  to 
have  numbered  twenty-six,  —  a  company  large  enough 
to  provide  at  least  one  person  of  distinction.  Born 
in  1 65 1,  William  began  his  active  life  as  a  tender 
of  sheep,  from  which  employment  he  passed  to  the 
building  of  coasting  vessels  and  sailing  in  them. 
Coming  thus  to  Boston  he  married  a  widow,  and 
varied  his  occupations  still  further  by  going  forth  to 
fight  with  Indians.     Then  there  was  a  voyage  to  the 


6o  BOSTON 

Spanish  Main  in  search  of  a  treasure-ship  sunk  in 
those  fabled  waters.  The  search  was  unsuccessful,  but 
proceeding  to  London  Phips  prevailed  upon  the  King, 
James  II,  and  the  Admiralty  to  fit  him  out  a  vessel 
well  armed  and  manned  to  seek  again  for  the  treasure. 
For  two  years  he  cruised  about  the  West  Indies,  avail- 
ing of  many  opportunities  to  prove  his  adventurous 
qualities,  but  gaining  nothing  beyond  what  he  con- 
sidered positive  information  concerning  the  where- 
abouts of  the  sunken  treasure.  It  was  an  age  of 
adventurers,  and  though  he  came  back  to  London 
empty-handed,  he  did  not  fail  to  persuade  still  other 
gentlemen  of  England  to  take  shares  with  him  in  a 
renewal  of  his  enterprise.  This  time  he  met  with  suc- 
cess, and  out  of  the  deep  drew  up  gold  and  silver 
bullion  amounting  to  a  million  and  a  half  of  dollars, 
besides  other  treasure  in  precious  jewels.  His  own 
share  of  the  haul  was  about  a  hundred  thousand 
dollars,  —  a  noble  fortune  for  the  times.  His  valor, 
or  his  money,  or  both,  gained  him  the  further  prize 
of  knighthood.  Mihtary  and  civil  honors  in  New 
England  followed  quickly.  The  final  honor  of  the 
governorship,  obtained  through  the  mediation  of  the 
minister  whose  preaching  had  first  quickened  him  to  a 
sense  of  sin,  provides  the  fitting  climax  of  a  career 
which  might  adorn  a  Sunday-school  story  but  for  the 
abundance  of  those  ruder  elements  from  which  old 
ballads  were  made. 

In  raising  such  a  man  to  the  chief  magistracy  of  the 
province.  Increase  Mather  could  not  have  been  quite 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  6i 

without  the  sense  that  even  "  more  than  most  self- 
made  men"  —  as  Professor  Wendell  puts  it  —  "Sir 
William  looked  up  to  the  clergy,  and  most  of  all  the 
clergy  to  the  Mathers."  He  probably  did  not  realize 
that  any  royal  governor,  from  the  very  nature  of  his 
office,  was  doomed  to  win  something  of  the  very 
unpopularity  which  Andros  achieved.  The  clerical 
cause,  therefore,  was  inevitably  destined  to  lose  more 
than  it  would  gain  from  close  association  with  the  gov- 
ernorship. Unforeseen  also  were  the  intensity  and 
the  results  of  the  witchcraft  tragedy,  in  which  Phips 
and  Cotton  Mather,  the  greater  son  of  Increase,  were 
conspicuous  fellow-actors.  Not  until  Lady  Phips 
herself  fell  a  victim  to  the  delusion,  and  was  suspected 
of  supernatural  dealings,  did  the  Governor  call  a  halt 
in  the  persecutions.  In  the  revulsion  of  sentiment 
against  all  the  wretched  business,  the  chief  persecutors 
were  themselves  involved.  Without  this  cause  for 
unpopularity.  Sir  William  had  enough  to  contend 
with  in  his  inherent  unfitness  for  the  governorship,  his 
defects  of  education,  his  faults  of  temper,  which  even 
led  him  more  than  once  into  pubUc  personal  encounters 
with  men  from  whom  he  disagreed.  Taken  together, 
all  these  things  rendered  his  administration  a  failure 
so  marked  that  the  news  of  his  death  in  England  in 
1695  could  have  brought  little  but  relief  to  the  people 
against  whose  charges  he  was  trying  to  defend  himself 
at  headquarters. 

Both    Increase  and   Cotton    Mather  long   survived 
him  —  for  the  father  lived  till  1723,  the  son  till  1728. 


62  BOSTON 

Between  Phips  and  the  younger  Mather  the  affairs  of 
witchcraft  provided  the  chief  bond  of  association.  It  is 
in  connection  with  these  affairs,  moreover,  that  the  name 
of  Cotton  Mather  has  its  greatest  significance  for  the 
generations  which  have  followed.  From  the  days  of 
his  literal-minded  contemporary,  Robert  Calef,  who 
could  see  nothing  but  fraud  and  credulity  in  the  so- 
called  diabolic  manifestations,  down  to  our  own  gen- 
eration. Cotton  Mather's  share  in  the  witchcraft 
delusion  has  won  him  a  full  measure  of  obldquy.  But 
since  the  appearance  of  Professor  Barrett  Wendell's 
study  of  the  man  and  his  times,  the  candid  reader 
must  at  least  accord  him  the  virtue  of  sincerity.  Even 
in  such  a  scene  as  the  hanging,  at  Salem,  of  the  Rev. 
George  Burroughs,  a  graduate  of  Harvard,  on  the 
charge  of  witchcraft,  when  Cotton  Mather  appeared 
amongst  the  spectators  on  a  horse  and  assured  them 
that  the  victim's  appeahng  declaration  of  his  innocence 
was  a  mere  inspiration  of  the  devil,  he  seems  to  have 
been  acting  in  the  confident  beHef  that  he  was  going 
about  his  Master's  business.  If  to-day  his  records  of 
spiritual  phenomena  were  first  appearing  as  reports 
of  psychical  research,  they  would  not  stand  forth 
as  unprecedented  statements,  but  in  many  instances 
would  mark  the  recorder  as  a  careful  investigator  and 
historian  of  occult  science. 

Putting  the  matter  of  witchcraft,  however,  wholly  to 
one  side.  Cotton  Mather  remains  in  important  aspects 
the  chief  figure  of  his  time  in  Boston.  If  scholarship 
is  to  be  judged  by  its  fruits  —  and  Mather's  death-bed 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON 


(>3 


advice  to  his  son  was  to  bear  constantly  in  mind  the 
word  Fructuosus  —  there  are  no  less  than  382  titles 
of  publications  from  his  pen  to  speak  for  the  indus- 
try of  his  mind 
and  hand.  Dun- 
ton,  the  London 
bookseller,  might 
have  said  perhaps 
more  truly  of  him 
than  of  his  contem- 
porary, the  Rev. 
Samuel  Willard, 
"  I  darken  his  mer- 
its if  I  call  him  less 
than  a  walking  li- 
brary." For  his 
preaching  —  it 
must  have  been 
partly  his  power 
and  not  wholly  his 
theme,  which  made 
it  necessary  for  him,  on  the  occasion  of  delivering  a 
discourse  upon  some  condemned  murderers,  to  reach 
his  pulpit  by  climbing  over  the  shoulders  of  his  con- 
gregation. It  is  a  curious  fact  that  in  matters  of  civil 
government,  to  which  of  course  his  influence  extended, 
we  are  said  to  owe  the  Mathers  our  American  plan 
which  compels  the  legislative  representative  of  any 
district  to  be  an  inhabitant  of  the  district  which  he 
represents  —  a  measure  first  introduced  for  the  politi- 


CoTTON  Mather. 


64  BOSTON 

cal  advantage  of  the  theocratic  party,  which  had  its 
chief  strength  in  the  country  regions.  This  was  a 
more  doubtful  service  to  his  country  than  his  effort 
later  in  life  to  check  the  frightful  ravages  of  the 
epidemics  of  smallpox  in  Boston.  In  1721  came  one 
of  the  worst  of  them.  The  population  of  the  town 
was  estimated  at  less  than  eleven  thousand.  Of  these 
it  is  said  that  nearly  six  thousand  had  the  disease,  and 
nearly  one  thousand  died.  It  was  high  time  for 
vigorous  action  of  some  sort.  Cotton  Mather  had 
read  of  what  inoculation  might  do,  but  his  proposal  to 
introduce  it  in  Boston  "  raised  an  horrid  Clamour." 
In  his  son  Samuel,  afterwards  a  distinguished  minister, 
he  found  a  brave  abettor  of  his  plan ;  the  boy  offered 
himself  for  experiment.  With  deep  searchings  of 
heart  the  father,  like  another  Abraham,  put  his  behefs 
to  the  test.  The  boy  fell  rapidly  sick  and  came  so 
near  to  death  as  to  fill  his  father's  soul  with  fear  and 
the  town  with  uproar.  But  one  day  his  Bible,  opened 
at  random,  bore  him  the  welcome  message,  "  Go  thy 
way,  thy  son  liveth."  And  the  promise  was  fulfilled. 
This  was  in  August.  In  November  his  "kinsman, 
the  minister  of  Roxbury,"  came  to  his  house  for 
inoculation.  One  night  during  the  patient's  illness 
some  unknown  ruffian  threw  into  the  window  of  the 
room  where  he  lay  a  heavy  iron  "grenado"  charged 
with  powder  and  oil  of  turpentine.  By  some  good 
chance  it  did  not  explode ;  and  on  it  was  found  a 
paper  bearing  the  words,  "  Cotton  Mather,  you  Dog ; 
Dam  you  ;   I'l  inoculate  you  with  this,  with  a  pox  to 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON  Gs 

you."  The  incident  is  noteworthy  to-day  chiefly  for 
its  showing  of  the  bitterness  with  which  a  daring 
movement  forward  was  resisted.  The  triumph  of 
the  pioneer  in  the  face  of  such  opposition  is  no  less 
extraordinary.  Surely  Cotton  Mather  the  minister, 
the  scholar,  the  man  of  affairs,  the  servant  of  humanity, 
is  to  be  remembered  as  something  more  than  a  harrier 
of  witches. 

Upon  nearly  the  whole  period  through  which  the 
Mathers,  father  and  son,  occupied  the  centre  of  the 
Boston  stage,  the  clearest  contemporary  light  is  cast  by 
the  diary  kept  by  Samuel  Sewall  through  most  of  his 
long  life  ending  in  1730.  Over  and  above  all  it  tells 
of  other  men  and  of  passing  events,  its  interest  Ues 
largely  in  the  faithful,  unconscious  picture  it  draws 
of  the  writer  himself  Sewall  has  been  called,  so 
often  as  to  make  one  almost  tired  of  the  name,  "the 
Puritan  Pepys";  yet  the  English  and  the  Boston 
Samuel  have  one  thing  so  much  in  common  that  the 
definition  justifies  itself.  Each  is  at  his  best  in  self- 
revelation.  Samuel  Sewall  shows  himself  not  only  a 
typical  Boston  citizen  of  his  time,  but  also  a  man  of 
quaint  and  striking  individuality.  His  education  re- 
ceived at  Harvard  College,  and  his  wealth,  acquired  in 
part  by  marriage  with  the  daughter  of  the  rich  mint- 
master  John  Hull,  gave  him  place  amongst  the  leaders 
of  the  laity.  As  an  officer  of  town  and  state  he  served 
the  people  in  many  capacities,  from  night-watchman  to 
chief  justice  of  Massachusetts.  His  open  repentance 
for  the  part  he  had  played  in  the  witchcraft  trials,  and 


66  BOSTON 

his  publication  of  the  pamphlet,  "  The  Selling  of 
Joseph,"  the  earliest  of  Boston  antislavery  documents, 
spoke  for  his  independence  of  mind.  In  affairs  of  the 
church  he  stood  for  the  old  against  the  new  order, 
even  to  the  extent  of  deserting    for  a  time  his  own 


^Vita  (ine  Uteris  eft  Mortis  Imago  ;  At 
]^   Vita  fine  Chrifto  eft  Morte  pejor. 

^  Si  CHRISTUM  J»rcit,mhilejf  fi cetera  mfelt, 
^SsCaRlSTUMmfiu.nihihl^ficatefa  Jifw, 

gSAMUEUS  SEWALL 

^  Iiber# 

^    Anno  DominL 


Samuel  Sewai.l's  Book-plate. 
In  possession  of  the  Author. 

minister  for  the  unpardonable  sin  of  cutting  his  hair 
and  wearing  a  wig.  When  the  aged  schoolmaster, 
Ezekiel  Cheever,  died  and  Sewall  came  to  sum  up  his 
virtues,  the  climax  of  praise  was  reached  in  — "  He 
abominated  Periwigs."  His  piety  found  private  ex- 
pression in  days  of  fasting,  prayer,  and  self-examination. 
The  diary  gives  a  detailed  account  of  one  of  these 
vigils — of  which  in  the  end  he  recorded,  "I  had  a  very 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  67 

comfortable  day  of  it."  The  funerals  he  attended,  the 
scarfs,  rings,  and  gloves  presented  to  him,  according  to 
the  custom  of  the  day,  as  a  mourner,  occupy  a  pro- 
digious space  in  Ms  chronicles.  The  mortuary  habit 
of  the  time  provided  him  even  with  "  an  awfuU  yet 
pleasing  treat "  in  visiting  his  own  family  tomb  and  in- 
specting the  coffins  of  his  elders  and  children.  In  the 
church  we  see  him  leading  the  singing  for  many  years 
until  one  day  a  front  tooth  in  his  under  jaw  came  out, 
and  he  put  "  this  old  servant  and  daughter  of  Musick  " 
into  his  pocket  with  pious  reflections  that  his  own 
career  was  nearly  ended.  As  the  venerable  suitor  for 
a  second  wife,  he  records  one  episode  of  courtship, 
often  quoted,  yet  well  deserving  repetition  for  its  ready 
gallantry :  "  Ask'd  her  to  acquit  me  of  Rudeness  if  I 
drew  off  her  Glove.  Enquiring  the  reason,  I  told  her 
'twas  great  odds  between  handling  a  dead  Goat  and  a 
living  Lady."  Pepys  himself  could  have  made  no  better 
retort.  Altogether  the  picture  of  Sewall,  as  drawn  by 
his  own  pen,  is  one  of  the  indispensable  figures  in  any 
general  view  of  Boston. 

It  is  remarkable,  indeed,  how  much  more  conspicu- 
ous in  the  retrospect  is  this  man  who  drew  his  own 
picture  than  most  of  the  royal  governors,  —  those 
truly  glittering  figures  of  their  successive  days.  In 
the  matter  of  portraiture,  one  must  remember,  it  was 
their  misfortune  to  be  largely  at  the  mercy  of  others, 
who  could  not  in  the  nature  of  things  be  wholly 
friendly.  The  unhappy  Hutchinson,  the  last  of  the 
governors  under  the  civil  law,  had  bitter  occasion  to 


68  BOSTON 

write  in  his  diary  :  "  Gubernatorum  vituperatio  populo 
placet,  and  every  governor  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  for 
near  a  century  past,  has  by  experience  found  the  truth 
of  it."  Yet  the  governors  succeeding  Sir  William 
Phips  —  ten,  if  we  include  General  Gage  the  military 
ruler  at  the  end  of  the  period,  and  exclude  the  lieuten- 
ant-governors who  held  the  post  ad  interim  —  were 
frequently  men  of  good  intentions  and  considerable 
abilities.  They  brought  with  them  to  the  democratic 
town  and  its  Province  House,  which  in  1716  became 
their  home,  an  atmosphere  of  courts  and  society  by  no 
means  unwelcome  to  the  ever-present  Tory  element. 
But  with  the  other  and  dominant  element  there  was 
one  constant,  rather  sordid  struggle  which  must  have 
given  their  assumption  of  vice-regal  state  an  ironical 
aspect.  The  crown  did  not  reward  their  labors  with  a 
definite  salary ;  the  self-sufficing  people  would  have  ob- 
jected to  having  their  magistrates  paid  from  abroad.  The 
payment  of  the  governors  was  left  to  the  legislature, 
and  that  body  consistently  refused  to  vote  salaries  to 
officials  not  of  their  own  choice.  Year  by  year  they 
voted  a  grant  larger  or  smaller  according  to  the  ac- 
ceptability of  the  governor  in  office.  Here  was  an 
obvious  source  of  disagreement  between  governor  and 
governed.  Incessant  disputing  over  an  income  never 
yet  promoted  good  feeling,  and  of  this  standing  quar- 
rel the  annals  of  the  period  are  full. 

It  is  impossible  to  attempt  more  than  a  pass- 
ing glance  at  some  of  the  governors  and  the  distin- 
guishing events  and  persons  of  their  successive  terms. 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  69 

The  second  governor,  Richard  Coote,  Earl  of  Bello- 
montj  whose  rule  of  less  than  two  years  ended  in  1701, 
can  hardly  be  noticed  without  a  mention  of  the  Captain 
Kidd  whose  memory  has  never  been  so  successfully 
buried  as  his  treasure.  It  was  under  Bellomont  that 
this  notorious  character,  possessing  now  that  strange 
if  dim  reality  of  a  mythical  personage,  sailed  and  sailed, 
and  underwent  trial  in  Boston  for  converting  a  King's 
errand  to  the  Spanish  Main  into  a  cruise  of  private 
piracy.  Bellomont  was  followed  by  Joseph  Dudley, 
the  end  of  whose  administration  brings  us  as  far  into 
the  century  as  171 5.  As  provisional  governor  under 
the  first  charter  and  as  an  associate  of  Andros,  he  had 
won  a  fair  measure  of  the  unpopularity  which  the 
native  New  Englander  who  became  too  good  a  loyalist 
was  sure  to  attain.  As  governor  of  the  royal  province, 
he  could  hardly  fail  to  increase  this  unpopularity,  or 
to  bring  the  day  of  utter  estrangement  between  old 
and  new  England  definitely  nearer.  It  was  this  unin- 
tentional service  to  their  countrymen  which  gained  for 
Dudley  and  Hutchinson  the  distinction  of  being  the 
best  hated  of  their  line. 

What  the  governors  were  doing  through  the  some- 
what monotonous  years  of  their  period  may  well  con- 
cern us  less  than  the  interests  of  the  people.  The 
terms  of  Samuel  Shute,  William  Burnet,  and  Jonathan 
Belcher,  covering  the  years  from  17 16  to  1741,  differ 
in  no  important  points  of  administration  or  popular 
feeling.  Under  Shute  there  was  fighting  with  Indians, 
under  all  three  fighting  about  salaries,  and  at  the  end 


70  BOSTON 

of  Belcher's  term  came  the  first  visit  and  preaching  of 
George  Whitefield.  At  this  point,  then,  we  may  stop  a 
moment  to  look  at  the  absorbing  interest  of  the  pro- 
vincial church.  All  the  world  knows  the  words  of 
Burke  at  the  time  when  conciliation  with  America 
had  to  be  discussed  in  England  :  "  The  religion  most 
prevalent  in  our  northern  colonies  is  a  refinement  on 
the  principles  of  resistance ;  it  is  the  dissidence  of  dis- 
sent and  the  protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion." 
And  indeed  just  as  the  form  of  civil  government 
was  breeding  estrangement  throughout  the  provincial 
period,  so  this  dissenting  dissent  was  constantly  nour- 
ishing in  Boston  a  popular  sentiment  of  independence. 
The  multiplication  of  churches  in  Boston  tells  part  of 
the  story.  Before  1699,  the  First,  Second,  and  South 
churches  sufficed  for  the  Puritan  congregations.  The 
foundation  before  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century 
of  the  Brattle  Street,  or  Manifesto,  the  New  North, 
the  New  South,  the  New  Brick,  the  Hollis  Street,  to 
say  nothing  of  what  the  Episcopalians,  Quakers, 
Baptists,  French  Protestants,  and  Irish  Presbyterians 
were  doing,  bespeaks  a  development  out  of  proportion 
with  the  growth  of  the  town.  It  was  the  fashion  of 
the  time  not  merely  to  differ  in  opinion  but  to  express 
difference  in  action.  The  Manifesto  Church  (1699) 
took  its  name  from  the  Manifesto  in  which  it  set  forth 
its  tendency  toward  more  liberal  beliefs  and  methods. 
Yet  for  all  its  emancipation  the  church  could  not  bring 
itself  to  use  the  "  pair  of  organs  "  bequeathed  to  it  by 
Thomas  Brattle  in   17 13,  and  voted,  "that  they  did 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON 


71 


not  think  it  proper  to  use  the  same  in  the  public  wor- 
ship of  God."  Troubled  by  no  such  scruples,  King's 
Chapel  profited  by  this  Puritan  rigor,  and  came  into 
possession  of  the  first  organ  used  in  New  England. 
When  there  was  a  disagreement  about  the  installation 
of  the  Rev.  Peter  Thacher  over  the  New  North  in 
1720,  a  schism  in  the  society  resulted  in  the  foundation 


The  Old  Brick  Church,  nearly  opposite  Old  State-house. 

of  the  New  Brick.  According  to  an  historian  of  the 
New  North,  quoted  by  L.  M.  Sargent  in  his  diverting 
Dealings  with  the  Dead^  the  malcontents  "  first  thought 
of  denominating  it  [their  church]  the  Revenge  Church 
of  Christ ;  but  they  thought  better  of  it,  and  called  it 
the  New  Brick  Church.  However,  the  first  name  was 
retained  for  many  years  among  the  common  people. 
Their  zeal  was  great,  indeed,  and  descended  to  pueril- 
ity. They  placed  the  figure  of  a  cock  as  a  vane  upon 
the    steeple,  out  of  derision  of  Mr.  Thacher,  whose 


72 


BOSTON 


The  Cockerel  Church 

Vane. 


Christian  name  was  Peter.  Taking  advantage  of  a 
wind,  which  turned  the  head  of  the  cock  toward  the 
New  North  meeting-house,  when  it  was  placed  upon 
the    spindle,    a   merry  fellow    straddled    over   it,  and 

crowed  three  times,  to  com- 
plete the  ceremony."  From 
this  weather-vane,  now  sur- 
mounting the  spire  of  the 
Shepard  Memorial  Church  in 
Cambridge,  the  New' Brick  ac- 
quired the  alternative  name  of 
the  Cockerel  Church. 

The  serious  records  of  the 
Puritan  church  are  interspersed 
with  many  bits  of  humor,  con- 
scious and  unconscious.  The  clerical  habit,  for  exam- 
ple, of  choosing  texts  with  a  personal  bearing  may  or 
may  not  have  been  practised  with  a  humorous  intention. 
It  is  told  of  the  Rev.  Mather  Byles,  the  Tory  minister 
of  the  Hollis  Street  Church,  that  disappointed  one  day 
in  the  expectation  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Prince  would 
preach  for  him,  he  rose  and  preached  himself  from  the 
text,  "  Put  not  your  trust  in  princes."  Here  we  may 
draw  our  own  conclusions,  for  Mr.  Byles  was  the 
notorious  Boston  wit  of  his  time.  It  helps  us  to  place 
him  as  a  citizen  of  the  world  by  remembering  that  he 
was  a  correspondent  of  Dr.  Watts,  and  of  Pope,  who 
sent  him  a  presentation  quarto  copy  of  the  Odyssey. 
He  it  was  whom  a  parishioner  once  found  nailing  list 
on   his   doors    to    keep    out    the    cold.     "  The   wind 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON 


73 


bloweth  wheresoever  it  listeth,  Dr.  Byles/'  said  the 
parishioner.  "  Yes,  sir,"  replied  the  Doctor,  "  and 
man  listeth  wheresoever  it  bloweth."  The  puns  and 
quips  of  the  witty  minister  well  repay  the  search  that 
may  readily  be  made  for  them. 

Certainly  there  was  an  element  of  unconscious 
humor  in  a  fact  noted  by  a  traveller,  Edward  Ward, 
who,  near  the  beginning  of  the  pro- 
vincial period,  told  many  questionable 
tales  about  the  Bostonians :  "They 
keep  no  Saints  Days,  nor  will  they 
allow  the  Apostles  to  be  Saints  ;  yet 
they  assume  that  Sacred  Dignity  to 
themselves,  and  say,  in  the  Title  Page 
of  their  Psalm-Book, '  Printed  for  the 
Edification  of  the  Saints  in  Old  and 
New  England.'"  In  so  far  as  this  is 
a  matter  of  printed  record,  it  may  be 
taken  more  seriously  than  other  ob- 
servations of  this  traveller.  Many 
of  his  statements  are  palpably  false; 
and  we  may  hope  the  following  story 
is  one  of  the  fabrications  :  "  I  was 
mightily  pleas'd  one  Morning  with  a 
contention  between  two  Boys  at  a 
Pump  in  Boston,  about  who  should 
draw  their  Water  first.  One  Jostled 
the  other  from  the  Handle,  and  he 
would  fill  his  Bucket  first,  because  his  Master  said 
Prayers  and  Sung  Psalms  twice  a  Day  in  his  family. 


Mather  Byles's 

Clock. 

In  possession  of  the 

Bostonian  Society. 


74  BOSTON 

and  the  other  Master  did  not.  To  which  the  Witty 
Knave  made  this  reply,  Our  House  stands  backward 
in  a  Court ;  if  my  Master  had  a  Room  next  the  Street, 
as  your  Master  has,  he'd  pray  twice  to  your  Master's 
once,  that  he  wou'd,  and  therefore  I'll  fill  my  pail 
first,  marry  will  I,  and  did  accordingly." 

The  state  of  affairs  suggested  by  this  anecdote, 
probably  a  piece  of  fiction,  was  more  accurately 
recorded  by  the  Rev.  George  Whitefield  when  he  first 
visited  Boston  in  1740.  He  found  the  town  '^remark- 
able for  the  external  observance  of  the  Sabbath.  Men 
in  civil  offices  have  a  regard  for  religion.  The  Gover- 
nor [Belcher]  encourages  them  ;  and  the  ministers  and 
magistrates  seem  to  be  more  united  than  those  in  any 
other  place  where  I  have  been.  I  never  saw  so  little 
scoffing  :  never  had  so  little  opposition."  These  words 
were  written  immediately  after  Whitefield  had  brought 
to  Boston  his  contribution  to  "  The  Great  Awakening." 
The  fame  of  the  young  Church  of  England  preacher 
had  travelled  from  Georgia  to  New  England,  and  the 
Puritan  ministers  of  Boston  had  sent  for  him  to  rouse 
the  people  from  what  was  considered  their  lethargy. 
In  a  community  which  responded  as  Boston  did  to  the 
ministrations  of  Whitefield,  there  could  have  been  no 
dearth  of  religious  susceptibility.  The  crowd  that 
thronged  once  to  hear  him  in  the  Old  South  packed 
the  streets  so  densely  that  he  had  to  enter  the  still 
familiar  building  through  one  of  its  windows.  At  the 
New  South  one  Monday  afternoon  a  panic  resulted 
from  a  noise  in  the  gallery,,  and  "  several  were  trod  to 


The  Old  South  Church,  with  its  New  Surroundings; 
CORNER  OF  Washington  and  Milk  streets. 


PROVINCIAL   BOSTON  77 

death."  Whitefield  led  the  crowd  to  the  Common, 
and  there  preached  his  sermon.  The  present-day 
Sunday  afternoon  gatherings  on  the  Charles  Street 
Mall  are  meagre  groups  compared  with  the  multitudes 
which  this  young  evangelist,  not  yet  twenty-six  years 
old,  gathered  about  him  on  the  autumnal  week  days 
and  Sundays  of  1740.  Once  the  congregation  was 
reckoned  as  numbering  eight  or  ten  thousand  persons, 
and  when  he  bade  farewell  to  Boston  at  the  end  of 
this  first  visit,  it  is  said  that  twenty  thousand  or  more 
came  to  the  Common  to  hear  him.  To  this  number 
the  neighboring  towns  must  have  contributed  liberally, 
for  Boston  itself  at  this  time  was  supposed  to  have 
only  eighteen  thousand  inhabitants.  Controversy 
regarding  the  value  of  Whitefield's  services  followed 
his  departure ;  but  one  minister  bore  record  that  never 
before,  "  except  at  the  time  of  the  general  earthquake," 
had  the  people  been  "  so  happily  concerned  about 
their  souls,"  and  another  testified  even  that  "  negroes 
and  boys  left  their  rudeness."  Perhaps  the  strongest  of 
all  witnesses  to  the  effectiveness  of  Whitefield's  preach- 
ing is  Benjamin  Franklin,  the  Boston  boy.  It  was 
when  he  was  grown  a  man  in  Philadelphia  that  he  had 
the  experience  described  with  characteristic  frankness 
in  his  Autobiography^  whence  it  is  often  quoted.  Listen- 
ing to  one  of  Whitefield's  sermons,  says  FrankHn,  "  I 
perceived  that  he  intended  to  finish  with  a  collection, 
and  I  silently  resolved  he  should  get  nothing  from  me. 
I  had  in  my  pocket  a  handful  of  copper  money,  three 
or  four  silver  dollars,  and  ^n^  pistoles  in  gold.     As  he 


78 


BOSTON 


proceeded  I  began  to  soften,  and  concluded  to  give 
the  coppers.  Another  stroke  of  his  oratory  made  me 
ashamed  of  that,  and  determined  me  to  give  the  silver ; 
and  he  finish'd  so  admirably,  that  1  empty'd  my 
pocket  wholly  into  the  collection  dish,  gold  and  all." 

But  this  story  be- 
longs primarily  to 
Philadelphia.  In 
Boston  there  is  the 
testimony  of  a  lady 
who  heard  one  of 
Whitefield's  ser- 
mons on  jthe  Com- 
mon. The  sun  had 
just  risen.  The 
words  of  the  preach- 
er's text  were  "  If 
I  take  the  wings 
of  the  morning  and 
dwell  in  the  utter- 
most parts  of  the 
sea,"  and  his  voice, 
George  whitefield.  said     the     hearer, 

"was  like  that  of  an  angel  when  he  uttered  them, 
while  his  arms  rose  slowly  from  his  sides  with  an  inde- 
scribable grace.  I  should  have  felt  no  surprise  to 
see  him  ascend  into  the  air.  That  would  have  been 
no  miracle.  The  miracle  was  rather  that  he  remained 
on  earth."  To  the  readers  of  Boston  history,  the 
significance  of  the  entire  Whitefield  episode  lies  not 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  79 

only  in  the  marvellous  power  of  the  preacher,  but  also 
in  that  general  concern  about  the  soul  which  made  the 
people — apparently  more  than  all  contained  in  Boston 
itself —  eager  to  go  forth  and  hear  him. 

During  the  long  term  of  Governor  William  Shirley, 
extending  from  1741  to  1756,  Whitefield  paid  the 
second  and  third  of  his  five  visits  to  Boston.  Through 
the  years  covered  by  this  governorship  the  provincial 
town  may  be  seen  in  many  of  its  most  characteristic 
aspects.  The  industries  of  ship-building  and  com- 
merce, though  steadily  losing  their  importance  as  the 
Revolution  drew  nearer,  throve  to  an  extent  which 
made  Boston  the  chief  port  of  North  America. 
Energy  and  thrift,  on  sea  and  land,  brought  fortune 
to  the  merchants  and  busy  occupation  to  all.  The 
houses,  gardens,  dress,  and  modes  of  living  bespoke 
widespread  comfort  and  even  a  degree  of  luxury  which 
did  not  mark  the  families  enjoying  it  as  rare  excep- 
tions to  the  general  rule.  An  Englishman  named 
Bennett,  who  visited  the  town  in  1740,  has  left  abun- 
dant record  of  the  pleasant  impression  made  by  many 
things  he  saw.  With  his  aid,  and  that  of  others,  one 
may  reconstruct  a  surprisingly  attractive  social  Hfe, 
with  its  afternoon  promenades  in  the  Mall  on  the 
northwest  side  of  the  Common,  and  its  glimpses  of 
gentlewomen  who  "  visit,  drink  tea  and  indulge  every 
piece  of  gentility  to  the  height  of  the  mode,  and 
neglect  the  affairs  of  their  families  with  as  good  a 
grace  as  the  finest  ladies  in  London."  Yet  the  train- 
ing of  New  England  housewives  was  by  no  means  so 


8o 


BOSTON 


utterly  ignored  as  the  Londoner's  report  might  lead 
one  to  think.  The  fourth  anniversary  of  a  society  for 
Promoting  Industry  and  Frugality  was  memorably 
celebrated  in  1749.  "Three  hundred  young  female 
spinsters,  decently  dressed,"  brought  their  spinning- 
wheels  to  the  Common  one  afternoon,  and  plied  their 

homely  craft,  "  a  female  "  at  each 
wheel,  to  the  accompaniment  of 
music  and  the  delight  of  many 
spectators.  • 

All  this  seems  strangely  re- 
mote from  our  own  day.  Yet 
the  year  in  which  it  took  place 
is  linked  to  the  present  by  the 
very  existence  of  one  of  the  most 
familiar  landmarks  of  Boston. 
In  1749  Governor  Shirley  laid 
the  corner-stone  of  the  present 
King's  Chapel,  erected  outside  the  walls  of  the  Episco- 
pal church  building  which  had  its  beginning  in  the  time 
of  Andros.  The  architect  of  the  new  structure,  Peter 
Harrison,  whose  work  lives  also  in  Trinity  Church, 
Newport,  and  Christ  Church,  Cambridge,  planned  a 
spire  which  has  not  yet  grown  out  of  the  sturdy 
tower.  The  one  important  change  in  the  original  ap- 
pearance of  the  building  came  with  the  addition  of 
the  portico  in  1789.  Within,  as  we  shall  see,  the  faith 
of  the  worshippers  has  changed.  It  is  to  the  Epis- 
copal parish  of  Christ  Church,  whose  building,  still  in 
use  on  Salem  street,  was  erected  in  1723,  that  we  must 


The  original  Faneuil 
Hall. 


The  Faneuil  Hall  of  To-day. 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON  83 

look  for  the  longest  continuity  in  Boston  of  forms  and 
place  of  worship. 

To  the  decade  in  which  the  present  King's  Chapel 
was  begun  belongs  the  origin  of  another  building 
intimately  associated  with  the  history  of  the  town. 
Aside  from  all  its  practical  use,  Faneuil  Hall  has 
been  of  constant  service  in  perpetuating  one  of  the 
French  Huguenot  names  of  eighteenth-century  Bos- 
ton, —  names  amongst  which  Brimmer,  Revere,  Char- 
don,  Sigourney,  and  Bowdoin  are  also  to  be  counted. 
When  Peter  Faneuil,  a  prosperous  and  public-spirited 
merchant,  offered  to  erect  a  market-house,  a  strong 
local  prejudice  against  buildings  of  the  sort  caused 
the  grudging  acceptance  of  the  gift  implied  in  a  vote 
of  367  to  360.  On  the  completion  of  the  building 
one  of  its  first  uses  was  for  a  town-meeting,  in  March, 
1742-3,  immediately  after  the  death  of  the  donor. 
Then  John  Lovell,  master  of  the  Latin  School,  pro- 
nounced a  eulogy  on  Peter  Faneuil,  and  declared  the 
building  to  be  "incomparably  the  greatest  benefaction  , 
ever  yet  known  to  our  Western  shore."  As  we  know 
it  now,  the  hall  has  undergone  the  changes  occasioned 
by  a  fire  which  destroyed  all  but  the  walls  in  1761, 
and  by  enlargements  through  lengthening  and  adding 
a  third  story  in  1805.  But  still  the  grasshopper  — 
perhaps  a  nimble  emblem  of  trade,  since  Peter  Faneuil 
is  said  to  have  borrowed  it  from  the  Royal  Exchange 
in  London  —  serves  for  its  weather-vane;  and  still  the 
American  schoolboy  knows  the  building  not  as  a 
market    but  as   the    "  Cradle   of   Liberty."     To    this 


84  BOSTON 

term  he  will  probably  cling  in  spite  of  the  objection 
raised  in  the  same  Dealings  with  the  Dead  to  which 
reference  has  already  been  made :  "  The  proverbial 
use  of  the  cradle  has  ever  been  to  rock  the  baby  to 
sleep ;  and  Heaven  knows  our  old  fathers  made  no 
such  use  of  Faneuil  Hall,  in  their  early  management 
of  the  bantling;  for  it  was  an  ever-wakeful  child, 
from  the  very  moment  of  its  first,  sharp,  shrill,  life- 
cry. 

No  benefaction  of  peace,  however,  could  have  done 
so  much  to  make  Shirley's  time  remembered  as  the 
conspicuous  act  of  military  prowess  which  connects 
his  name  with  the  fall  of  Louisburg,  the  French 
"Gibraltar"  of  Cape  Breton.  To  Shirley  belongs 
much  of  the  credit  for  sending  out  the  provincial 
troops  which  under  Pepperell  in  1745,  with  the  aid 
of  an  Enghsh  fleet,  laid  a  six-weeks'  siege  to  the 
distant  and  apparently  impregnable  fortress.  The 
enterprise  has  not  unreasonably  been  called  "  a  Bos- 
ton-undertaking." It  has  also  been  defined  as  "an 
extraordinary  piece  of  good  luck,  and  nothing  else." 
The  surrender  of  650  soldiers  and  1300  civilians 
was  its  glorious  result,  of  which  many  generations  of 
Harvard  students  have  had  a  tangible  reminder  in  the 
iron  cross  brought  from  the  garrison  chapel  at  Louis- 
burg, and  only  in  recent  years  moved  from  its  place 
above  the  entrance  to  the  college  hbrary  at  Cambridge 
to  a  safer  lodgment  within  the  walls.  Protestant  zeal 
and  Anglo-Saxon  pride  gloried  ahke  in  the  victory. 
Incidentally    the    provincial    soldier    learned    that    he 


PROVINCIAL    BOSTON 


85 


could    make    an    effective    fight    against    foes    more 
"civilized"  than  the  Indians. 

The  term  of  Shirley  extended  eleven  years  beyond 
the  fall  of  Louisburg,  until   1756.     We  have  looked 


Present  Entrance  to  Governor  Shirley's  Mansion, 
Shirley  Street,  Dorchester. 

rather  upon  the  achievements  of  the  time  than  at  its 
inevitable  troubles.  The  people  and  the  governor 
were  of  course  frequently  at  odds,  but  misunderstand- 
ings of  so  much  more  serious  a  nature  were  soon  to 
come  that  we  can   afford   to   emphasize   the   brighter 


86  BOSTON 

colors  of  this  mid-century  picture.  Shirley's  suc- 
cessor in  office,  Governor  Thomas  Pownall,  whose 
rule  began  in  1757  and  ended  at  his  own  request 
in  1760,  made  perhaps  a  more  definite  effort  toward 
sympathy  with  those  he  came  to  govern.  His  was 
the  foresight,  unusual  in  a  royal  governor,  to  prophesy 
that  the  American  people  would  eventually  "  grow  res- 
tive, and  disposed  to  throw  off  their  dependency  upon 
their  mother  country ; "  and  his  vision  of  the  future 
America  was  that  of  "  an  asylum  one  day  or  another 
to  a  remnant  of  mankind  who  wish  and  deserve  to 
live  with  poHtical  liberty."  How  near  that  day  was 
to  his  own  he  did  not  suspect.  Immediately  after 
him  began  the  train  of  circumstances  which  could 
culminate  only  in  revolution.  Provincial  Boston  was 
technically  to  endure  fifteen  years  longer ;  yet  the 
changes  in  its  thought  and  actions  came  so  quickly 
after  Pownall's  withdrawal  that  a  new  chapter,  under 
a  new  title,  is  needed  for  their  narration. 


IV 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


CERTAIN  places  and  men  in  all  the 
history  of  the  world  have  suddenly 
emerged  from  local  into  national  or  uni- 
versal significance.  Through  the  preced- 
ing years  the  town  records  have  been  the 
records  of  town  taxes  and  town  disputes  ; 
the  citizens  have  appeared  as  candidates  and  voters  at 
this  and  that  election.  Indeed  they  are  little  or  noth- 
ing more — until,  all  at  once,  they  find  themselves  a 
part  of  national  history.  It  may  not  be  for  long,  yet  it 
is  long  enough  to  set  them  definitely 
apart  from  the  men  and  the  places 
which  have  remained  merely  local. 

For  Boston  the  Revolutionary 
period  —  including  the  fifteen  years 
leading  up  to  the  final  catastrophe  — 
was  preeminently  the  time  of  this 
distinction.  The  result  is  that  Bos- 
ton local  history,  through  the  sixth 
and  seventh  decades  of  the  eighteenth  century,  furnishes 
much  of  the  most  familiar  material  of  American  history. 
To  regard  it  here  wholly  as  local  or  wholly  as  national 
history  would  be  to  do  what  has  already  been  done 
excellently  and  often.     Let  us  rather,  for  a  while,  look 

87 


NVo  SeiLI^EK'GS/ 


Stamp  Act  Stamp. 


88  BOSTON 

at  some  of  the  successive  events  as  scenes  In  the  lives 
of  representative  Boston  men  of  their  day.  Perhaps  a 
few  of  the  events  themselves  wiU  show  even  the  more 
clearly  for  serving  as  the  background  of  personal 
activities. 

In  one  of  the  first  of  these  events  the  principal 
actor  was  James  Otis^the  place  of  whose  burial  is 
familiar  to  those  of  the  hurrying  thousands  who  look 
aside  from  modern  Tremont  Street  into  the  Old 
Granary  Burying-ground.  In  1761  James  Otis  was 
no  less  a  person  than  advocate-general  of  the  province, 
then  governed  by  Sir  Francis  Bernard,  who  had  suc- 
ceeded Pownall  the  year  before,  and  deserves  special 
remembrance  in  later  generations  as  the  architect  of 
Harvard  Hall  at  Cambridge,  and  for  his  reputed  ability 
to  recite  the  whole  of  Shakespeare's  works  from  mem- 
ory. As  advocate-general  it  was  the  duty  of  Otis  to 
defend  in  a  test  case  a  government  measure  issuing 
"  Writs  of  Assistance "  which  enabled  the  customs 
officers  to  search  the  houses  of  persons  suspected  of 
smuggling.  Instead  of  defending  this  law  Otis  resigned 
his  post,  and  became  the  spokesman  of  those  who 
undertook  to  prove  the  government's  position  illegal. 
The  case  was  tried  in  February,  1761,  before  Thomas 
Hutchinson,  recently  created  chief  justice,  and  his  four 
associate  judges.  When  the  King's  attorney  had  said 
his  say,  and  Oxenbridge  Thacher,  a  Boston  lawyer  of 
high  repute,  had  made  his  scholarly  reply,  James  Otis 
flashed  upon  the  scene.  "  Otis,"  said  the  diary  of 
John  Adams  in  describing  the  occasion,  "  was  a  flame 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  89 

of  fire.  With  a  promptitude  of  classical  allusions,  a 
depth  of  research,  a  rapid  summary  of  historical  events 
and  dates,  a  profusion  of  legal  authorities,  a  prophetic 
glance  of  his  eye  into  futurity,  and  a  torrent  of  impet- 
uous eloquence,  he  hurried  away  everything  before 
him."  Taking  the  good  old  English  position  that  a 
man's  house  is  his  castle,  he  made  his  plea  for  the  true 
British  liberties  against  which  no  act  of  Parliament 
could  prevail.  "  I  oppose  that  kind  of  power,"  he 
declared,  "  the  exercise  of  which,  in  former  periods  of 
English  history,  cost  one  king  of  England  his  head  ^ 
and  another  his  throne."  Here  were  words  of  a  sort 
to  which  the  ears  of  Boston  men  had  not  yet  grown 
accustomed.  But  the  future  was  in  them.  John 
Adams  might  well  write :  "  Every  man  of  a  crowded 
audience  appeared  to  me  to  go  away,  as  I  did,  ready 
to  take  arms  against  the  writs  of  assistance.  Then  and 
there  was  the  first  scene  of  the  first  act  of  opposition  '' 
to  the  arbitrary  claims  of  Great  Britain.  Then  and 
there  ^he  child  Independence  was  born."  It  made  no 
great  matter  that  Hutchinson,  reserving  his  decision 
till  he  could  receive  instructions  from  England, 
adjudged  the  Writs  of  Assistance  entirely  legal.  The 
speech  of  Otis  announced  the  beginning  of  a  new 
order,  and  Otis  himself  stepped  into  the  full  light  of 
popular  favor. 

Yet  Otis  was  by  no  means  of  constant  service  to  the 
American  cause.  His  morbid  and  uncertain  temper 
rendered  him  often  a  difficult  inmate  even  of  the  house 
of  his  friends.     From  these  in  turn  there  are  intima- 


90  BOSTON 

tions  that  self-seeking,  and  the  pique  resulting  from  the 
appointment  of  Hutchinson  instead  of  the  father  of 
Otis  to  the  chief-justiceship,  went  far  to  determine  his 
course  of  action.  Other  motives  were  even  more 
obscure.  More  than  once  he  is  to  be  seen  on  the 
government  side  of  points  at  issue.  In  spite  of  all  this 
it  was  his,  in  town-meetings  and  legislature,  to  hold 
and  sway  the  people  as  only  an  orator  can.  From  him, 
at  the  very  first,  they  took  their  rallying  cry,  ^^  no  taxa- 
tion_jwithQut  representation.'*  To  give  a  country  its 
watchwords  is  like  writing  its  ballads.  When,  there- 
fore, the  attack  made  upon  Otis  in  1769  by  Captain 
Robinson,  a  Commissioner  of  Customs,  resulted  in  the 
wrecking  of  a  mind  already  of  uneven  balance,  the 
people  who  had  made  his  words  their  own  were  deeply 
stirred  with  sorrow  and  indignation.  There  were  still 
to  be  times  when  Otis,  even  in  public  places,  was  him- 
self again.  One  likes  to  think  he  was  most  himself 
when  he  refused,  after  Captain  Robinson's  acknowledg- 
ment of  fault  and  contrition,  to  accept  the  payment 
of  damages,  ^2000  sterling,  awarded  him  by  a  jury. 
And  surely  there  was  a  return  of  his  true  spirit,  when, 
armed  with  a  borrowed  musket,  he  appeared  amongst 
the  American  troops  on  the  scene  of  the  Bunker  Hill 
fight,  and,  protected  by  the  providence  which  cares 
for  children,  did  a  man's  share  of  the  long  day's 
work. 

Against    the    unhappy  variations  in   the    course  of 
Otis,  one  naturally  places  the  consistent  steadiness  of 
\ Samuel  Adams  as  the  central  figure  ^f\Re volution ary_ 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  91 

Boston.  "As  Massachusetts  led  the  thirteen  colo- 
nies/' Dr.  James  K.  Hosmer  has  written  in  his  biog- 
raphy of  Samuel  Adams,  "  the  town  of  Boston  led 
Massachusetts."  Of  the  man  who  led  Boston,  the 
biographer  further  says :  "  Of  this  town  of  towns 
Samuel  Adams  was  the  son  of  sons.  He  was  strangely 
identified  with  it  always.  He  was  trained  in  Boston 
schools  and  Harvard  College.  He  never  left  the  town 
except  on  the  town's  errands,  or  those  of  the  Province 
of  which  it  was  the  head.  He  had  no  private  business 
after  the  first  year  of  his  manhood ;  he  was  the  public 
servant  simply  and  solely  in  places  large  and  small,  — 
fire-ward,  committee  to  see  that  chimneys  were  safe, 
tea  collector,  moderator  of  town-meeting,  representa- 
tive. One  may  almost  call  him  the  creature  of  the 
town-meeting."  Through  these  words  we  see  him 
clearly  as  the  democrat,  —  the  man  who  looked  to  the 
people  as  the  true  source  of  authority  and  power.  As 
early  as  1743  when  he  took  his  Master's  degree  at  the 
Harvard  Commencement,  the  subject  of  his  thesis  was  : 
"  Whether  it  be  Lawful  to  resist  the  Supreme  Magis- 
trate, if  the  Commonwealth  cannot  be  otherwise  pre- 
served." What  his  argument  was  we  do  not  know ; 
but  it  is  easy  enough  to  imagine  the  conclusion  at 
which  he  arrived.  Of  all  the  leaders  of  the  opposi- 
tion to  royal  encrqachrn^pj  on  provinciaL  rigiits,  it  was 
he  who  first  foresaw,  certainly  as  early  as  1768,  the 
inevitable  separation.  Through  all  the  stirring  scenes 
in  which,  with  this  end  constantly  in  view,  he  bore  a 
conspicuous  part  —  in  town-meeting  and  legislature,  in 


92 


BOSTON 


the  formation  and  guidance 
of  the  all-important  Commit- 
tee of  Correspondence  —  we 
cannot  undertake  to  follow 
him.  The  story  of  one  day 
—  the  day  following  the  "  Bos- 
ton  Massacre  "  —  is  amply 
illustrative  of  the  quality  and 
effectiveness  of  his  leader- 
ship. 

Two  regiments  of  British 
troops,  the  14th  and  the  29thj 
had  been  quartered  in  the 
town  for  a  year  and  a  half 
when,  on  the  night  of  March 
5,  1770,  the  friction  between 
the  soldiers  and  the  people, 
represented  that  night  by 
some  boys  and  older  mischief- 
makers,  culminated  in  a  volley 
of  bullets  from  the  soldiery. 
Three  of  the  townspeople  were 
killed,  eight  were  wounded. 
"  Such,"  says  John  Fiske,  at 
the  conclusion  of  his  detailed 
description  of  the  event,  "was  the  famous  Boston  Mas- 
sacre. All  the  mildness  of  New  England  civilization 
is  brought  most  strikingly  before  us  in  that  trucu- 
lent phrase.  The  careless  shooting  of  half  a  dozen 
townsmen    is   described  by    a    word    which    historians 


Samuel  Adams. 
Statue  in  Adams  Square,  by- 
Anne  Whitney. 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


93 


apply   to   such   events  as   Cawnpore   and   the   Sicilian 
Vespers." 

On  the  next  morning  theSselectmen  waited  on  Lieu- 
tenant-governor Hutchinson,  acting  governor  since 
Bernard's  departure  in  the  preceding  July,  and  declared 
that  the  troops  and  the  people  could  no  longer  live  in 
fRe  sam^  fown.  Hutchinson  put  them  off  by  saymg 
he  had  no  authority  to  order  the  removal  of  the  mili- 
tary. Meanwhile  the  people  had  gathered  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  whither  the  selectmen  were  summoned.  There 
a  committee  of  fifteen  was  appointed  to  repeat  the 
demand  for  removal,  and  a  general  town-meeting  was 
called  for  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon.  But  with 
Hutchinson  the  fifteen  were  no  more  successful  than 
the  selectmen  had  been.  He  stood  manfully  to  his 
guns,  declaring  that  the  power  to  remove  the  troops 
lay  solely  in  General  Gage,  then  in  New  York.  Un- 
fortunately for  Hutchinson, \ColonelDalrymple,  the 
senior  military  officer  in  Boston  at  the  time,  said  that^ 
one  of  the  regiments  could  be  removed  if  the  magis- 
trates strongly  desired  it.  This  was  the  message  the 
committee  was  finally  empowered  to  convey  to  the 
anxious  town-meeting.  So  great  a  throng  had  come 
to  it  that  Faneuil  Hall,  smaller  than  it  is  to-day,  was 
inadequate,  and  an  adjournment  to  the  Old  South 
Meeting-house  had  taken  place. 

It  was  a  short  walk,  then,  that  the  committee  had  to 
take  —  from  the  head  of  King  (now  State)  Street  to 
the  head  of  Milk  Street.  But  it  was  a  walk  which 
Samuel  Adams  turned  to  momentous  account.     Hat 


94  BOSTON 

in  hand  he  passed,  with  his  fellows,  between  the  double 
row  of  townspeople  overflowing  from  the  meeting- 
house into  the  streets.  Right  and  left  as  he  walked, 
he  turned  to  the  eager  citizens,  and  said,  and  said 
again,  *^  Rnfh  rppriment«^  nr  none  !  "  For  the  purpose 
of  the  day  it  was  as  good  a  phrase  as  any  that  Otis 
ever  coined  for  the  currency  of  speech.  Once  within 
the  Old  South,  the  committee  delivered  its  message  : 
one  regiment  might  go  to  the  Castle  in  the  harbor 
if  the  magistrates  must  have  it  so.  But  from  all 
the  people,  crowding  the  floor,  stairways,  doors  and 
galleries,  rolled  back  the  words  of  Adams,  "  Both 
regiments  or  none ! "  This  was  the  simple  reply 
which  the  committee  of  seven,  now  chosen,  had 
to  bear  back  to  the  Lieutenant-governor,  his  august 
councillors,  and  the  military  authorities.  It  was  only 
fitting  that  Sam  Adams,  having  framed  in  the  street 
the  answer  which  the  town-meeting  gave  in  the 
meeting-house,  should  deliver  it  in  the  council  cham- 
ber. And  so  he  did  —  in  the  plainest  terms.  "Jf 
you^  or  Colonel  Dalrymple  under  you,"  —  he  ad- 
dressed himself  to  Hutchinson,  —  "  have  the  power  to 
remove  one  regiment,  you  have  the  power  to  remove 
both;  and  nothing  shgrt. of  their  total  removal  wili~ 
satisfy  the  peopl^"  ^t-  prpcpr^^p  fVip  peace  o^'  the  Prov- 
ince." With  such  argument  as  this,  he  convinced  all 
but  Hutchinson.  At  last  the  sturdy  loyalist  himself, 
persuaded  by  his  secretary,  Andrew  Oliver,  that 
further  resistance  was  futile,  yielded  the  point,  and  both 
regiments  were  ordered  to  the   Castle.     Thus  it  was 


KING, 

A     PROCLAMATION, 

For  fuppreffing  Rebellion  and  Sedition. 

GEORGES, 

)HEREAS  many  of  Our  Subjefts  in  divers  Parts  of  Our  Colonies  and  Plantations 
in  North  America,  mifled  by  dangerous  and  ill-defigning  Men,  and  forgetting 
the  Allegiance  which  they  owe  to  the  Power  that  has  protefted  and  fuftained 
them,  after  various  diforderly  Afts  committed  in  Difturbance  of  the  Publick 
Peace,  to  the  Obftruflion  of  lawful  Commerce,  and  to  the  Opprefflon  of  Our 
loyal  Subje£ls  carrying  on  the  fame,  have  at  length  proceeded  to  an  open  and 
avowed  Rebellion,  by  arraying  themfelves  in  hoftile  Manner  to  wlthftand  the 
Execution  of  the  Law,  and  traitoroufly  preparingr.  ordering,  and  levying  War 
againft  Us;  And  whereas  there  is  Reafon.to  apprehend  that  fuch  Rebellion  hath 
been  much  promoted  and  encouraged  by  the  traitorous  Correfpondence,  Counfels,  and  Comfort  of 
divers  wicked  and  dcfperatePerfons  within  this  Realm:  To  the  End  therefore  that  none  of  Our  Subjefts 
may  negleft  or  violate  their  Duty  through  Ignorance  thereof,  or  through  any' Doubt  of  the  Protedtion 
which  the  Law  will  afford  to  their  Loyalty  and  Zeal ;  We  have  thought  fit,  by  and  with  the  Advice  of 
Our  Privy  Council,  to  iffue  this  Our  Royal  Proclamation,  hereby  declaring  that  not  only  all  Our 
Officers  Civil  and  Military  are  obliged  to  exert  their  utmoft  Endeavours  to  fupprefs  fuch  Rebellion,  and 
to  bring  the  Traitors  to  Juftice;  but  that  all  Our  Subje£ls  of  this  Realm  and  the  Dominions' thereunto 
belonging  are  bound  by  Law  to  be  aiding  and  affifting.iit  the  SupprelHon  of  fuch  Rebellion,  and  to 
difclofe  and  make  known  all  traitorous  Confpiracies  and  Attempts  againft  Us,  Our  Crown  and  Dignity; 
And  We  do  accordingly  ftridly  charge  and  command  all  Our  Officers  as  well  Civil  as  Military, 
and  all  other  Our  obedient  and  loyal  Subjeds,  to  ufe  their  utmoft  Endeavours  to  withftand  and 
fupprefs  fuck  Rebellion,  and.  to  difclofe  and  make  known  all  Treafbns  and  traitorous  Confpi- 
racies which  they  fhall  know  to  be  againft  Us,  Our  Crown  and  Dignity  ;  and  for  that  Purpofe, 
that  they  tr'anfmit  to  One  of  Our  Principal  Secretaries  of  State,  or  other  proper  Officer,  due  and 
full  Information  of  all  Perfons  who  fhall  be  found  carrying  on  Correfpondence  with,  or  in  any 
Manner  or  Degree  aiding  or  abetting  the  Perfons  now  in  open  Arms  and  Rebellion  againft  Our 
Government  within  any  of  Our  Colonies  and  Plantations  in  North  America,  in  order  to  bring  to 
condign  Punifhment  the  Authors,  Perpetrators,  and  Abettors  of  fuch  traitorous  Defigns. 

Given  at  Our  Court  at  St.  James'i,  the  Twenty-third  Day  of  Augujl,    One   thoufand 
feven  hundred  and  feventy-five,  in  the  Fifteenth  Year  of  Our  Reign. 


God    fave    the    King. 


LONDON: 

Prmted  by  Charla  Ejre  and  IViUiam  Sirahan,  Printers  to  »hc  King's  moft  Excclleni  Majcfty.     1775. 


Broadside  in  possession  of  Boston  Public  Library. 


^G  BOSTON 

that  the  14th  and  29th  regiments  of  his  Majesty's 
forces  won  from  the  lips  of  Lord  North  himself  the 
memorable  nickname  of  the  "  Sam  Adams  Regiments." 
By  this  title  they  are  still  known  in  local  history.  In 
the  annals  of  the  British  Army  the  14th,  with  a  record 
extending  from  the  siege  of  Gibraltar  and  Culloden, 
through  Corunna,  Waterloo,  and  the  Crimea  down  to 
South  Africa,  is  now  the  "  Prince  of  Wales's  Own  "  ; 
the  29th,  which  fought  at  Ramillies,  in  the  Peninsular 
campaign,  and  against  the  Boers,  has  become  the 
"  Worcestershire."  The  name  of  Sam  Adams  does 
not  happen  to  appear  in  the  army  list  in  connection 
with  either  regiment. 

The  energy  and  power  of  one  man  in  turning  the 
tmgedy  of  the  /' Massacre  "  so  quickly  into  a  victory 
for  the  people  are  worthy  of  all  admiration.  The  re- 
strained fairness  of  the  town  in  dealing  with  the  soldiers 
who  fired  the  fatal  shots  is  perhaps  even  more  admi- 
rable. Their  trial  was  postponed  till  time  had  cooled 
the  immediate  passions  of  revenge.  Surely  it  was  a 
high  spirit  of  justice  which  brought  the  patriots,  John 
Adams  and  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  to  the  legal  defence  of 
Captain  Preston  and  his  offending  soldiers.  Robert 
Treat  Paine,  no  less  allied  to  the  patriot  cause,  con- 
ducted the  prosecution.  But  Adams  and  Quincy  se- 
cured acquittal  for  Preston  and  for  all  but  two  of  his 
soldiers.  These,  convicted  of  manslaughter,  were 
merely  branded  in  the  hand,  and  released. 

Happily,  on  this  occasion  the  voice  of  Sam  Adams 
was  not  heeded ;  his  counsel  was  for  an  earlier  trial  and 


An  ASSOCIATION, 

PROPOSED      TO      THE 

LOYAL     CITIZENS. 


A 


GKLE  ABLE  la  the  Proclamation  ijfued  by  His.  Excellency  tbc 
Honorable  Major-General  JVILL  I  AM  HOIVE,  Commander  in 
Chief  of  His  Majejlfs  Forces,  (dc.  ^c.  ^c. 


WE,  His  Majefty's  loyal  Subje(n:s  of  the  Town  of  Bojlon,  being 
fehiible  of  the  Duty  incumbent  on  us,  "  to  do  every  thing  in 
our  Power,  to  fupport  Order  and  good  Covcrnnient,  as  well  as 
te  contribute  our  Aid.  to  the  internal  Security  of  the  Town  ;" — N  O  W 
take  this  Opportunity  to  profefs  our  firm  Allegiance  to  His  Majefly,  and 
entire  Obedience  to  His  Government  and  Laws. 

From  a  Difpofition  to  toniifpnue  quiet  and  obedient  Subjefts,  we 
have  generally  neglefted.  tbj:;^fcf  Arms  vdiile  thofc  of  diflerenc 
Charaflers  and  Sentiments,  mUlKn  diligently  endeavouring  to  improve 
themfelves  in  that  A^t-  Upon  thcfc  Principles,  we  have  remained  in,  or 
fled  to,  this  Town:  Neither  do  we  wifli  or  delign  to  leave  it, 

W  E  confider  it  as  bur  ftrongeft  Duty  to  contribute  our  Aid  in  Promoting 
the.  Peace,  Order  and  Security  of  the  Town  ;  and  are  willing  to  be  em- 
ployed, to  thefe  good  Purpofes,  in  the  Ways  and  Means  fuited  to  our  Ca- 
pacities. TO  THAT  END,  we  chearfully  accept  the  OiTers  of  his  Ex- 
cellency, and  NOW  VOLUNTARILY  ASSOCIATE,  for  the  Purpofes 
mentioned  it\  his  Proclamation  ;  hereby  Promifing,  "  that  fqch  of  us  as 
he  fhall  think  proper,  or  able  to  perform  the  Duties  therein  required,  will 
be  formed  into  Companies,  as  therein  mentiooed:  And  will,  to  thectmofl: 
of  our  Power,  faithfully  perform  thofe  Services,  ajadpun^ualiy  difcharge 
the  Trufts  rcpofcd  m  us.  And,  ffiat  fuch  as  are  not  able  to  go  through 
thofe  Duties^  will  freely  contribute  our  Proportions,  according  to  our 
Abilities,  to  raife  a  Sum  of  Money  for  promoting  this  falutary  Purpofe,  to 
be  applied  to  the  Ufe  of  thofe,  who  arc  able,  in  fuch  Manner  as  the 
General^  or  thofe  he  may  appoint,  may  think  proper. 


Broadside  in  Response  to  General  Howe's  Proclamation  calling 
UPON  Boston  Tories  to  organize  for  Preservation  of  Order  and 
Good  Government. 

In  possession  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 


98  BOSTON 

a  severer  verdict.  It  remained  for  him,  however,  as  we 
shall  see,  to  speak  the  important  word  which  opened 
the  Boston  Tea  Party.  And  it  was  he  who  told  the 
private  emissary  of  General  Gage,  tempting  him  with 
promises  of  royal  favor  if  he  would  take  a  less  aggres- 
sive course :  "  Sir,  I  trust  I  have  long  since  made 
my  peace  with  the  King  of  kings.  No  personal  con- 
sideration shall  induce  me  to  abandon  the  righteous 
cause  of  my  country.  Tell  Governor  Gage  it  is  the 
advice  of  Samuel  Adams  to  him,  no  longer  to  insult 
the  feelings  of  an  exasperated  people." 

It  was  not  till  May  of  1774  that  Gage,  as  military 
governor,  superseded  Hutchinson,  the  last  of  the  civil 
chief  magistrates  of  royal  appointment.  As  Otis  and 
Adams  stand  out  as  representatives  of  the  American  side 
of  the  conflict,  the  figure  of  Hutchinson  may  fairly  be 
regarded  as  typical  of  all  that  was  best  in  the  native 
Tory  element.  It  is  no  longer  a  heresy  in  America 
to  regard  this  element  as  justified  by  something  other 
than  a  purblind  conservatism.  After  a  cause  is  lost  it 
grows  easier  to  see  the  good  in  those  who  have  sup- 
ported it,  and  to  give  them  credit  for  sincerity  in  their 
way  of  looking  at  things.  Certainly  the  later  American 
students  of  Revolutionary  history  have  done  Governor 
Hutchinson  full  justice  as  a  man  of  honest  patriotism 
arrayed  on  the  side  where  he  and  some  of  his  fellows 
thought  the  right  and  the  best  interest  of  the  colonies 
were  to  be  found.  They  would  be  ungrateful  his- 
torians who  should  fail  to  thank  him  for  his  invaluable 
History  of  Massachusetts  Bay.     With  the  thanks  must 


REVOLUTIONARY   BOSTON 


99 


be  mingled  some  compassion  for  the  small  comfort  his 
loyalty  to  the  crown  ever  brought  him.  It  was  indeed 
a  thankless  task  to  rule  a  people  of  whom  one  of  their 
descendants  could  say  with  a  measure  of  truth :  "  It 
must  be  frankly  admitted  that  if  the  mother  country 
had  really  in  right  and  reason  any  prerogative  authority 
over  us,  we  were  not  only  indocile,  but  stiffly  self-willed, 
refractory,  and  in  fact  rebellious." 

The  circumstances  following  the  passage  of  the 
Stamp  Act  in  1765  show,  perhaps  better  than  any 
other,  what  Hutchinson,  then  lieutenant-governor,  had 
to  deal  with  in  the  way  of  popular  opposition.  In 
England  it  was  urged,  not  wholly  without  fairness,  that 
the  people  of  America  should  assume  their  share  of  a 
burden  of  debt  incurred  in  defending  them  against  the 
French  and  Indians.  It  was  not  recognized  that  the 
local  legislatures  might  have  determined  better  than 
Parhament  the  amount  of  the  tax  and  the  measures  for 
collecting  it.  Hutchinson  himself,  be  it  said,  called 
his  Maker  to  witness  that  he  did  everything  in  his 
power  to  prevent  the  passage  of  the  obnoxious  Act. 
Yet  it  was  passed.  The  news  of  it  reached  Boston  in 
April.  By  way  of  celebrating  the  birthday  of  the 
Prince  of  Wales  in  August,  the  "  Sons  of  Liberty  " 
flocked  to  the  Liberty  Tree,  opposite  the  foot  of  the 
present  Boylston  Street,  hanged  in  effigy  Hutchinson's 
brother-in-law,  Andrew  Oliver,  distributer  of  stamps, 
and  suspended  beside  him,  in  derision  of  the  Earl  of 
Bute,  prime  minister  of  England,  an  old  boot  from 
which    the  unmistakable  symbol  of  head   and    horns 


lOO 


BOSTON 


The  Hutchinson  House,  Garden  Court  Street,  North  End. 

peered  out.  Twelve  days  later,  August  16,  1765,  a 
mob  plundered  the  house  of  Benjamin  Hallowell, 
comptroller  of  customs,  and  when  with  the  help  of  his 
wine-cellar  they  "ripened  in  ebriety ''  —  to  use  the 
Lieutenant-governor's  own  delightful  phrase  —  they 
rushed  on  to  the  house  of  Hutchinson  himself.  "  One 
of  the  best  finished  houses  in  the  Province/'  as  a  letter 
of  Hutchinson's  describes  the  issue  of  that  night  — 
"  had  nothing  remaining  but  the  bare  walls  and  floor. 
Not  content  with  tearing  off  all  the  wainscot  and  hang- 
ings, and  splitting  the  door  to  pieces,  they  beat  down 
the  partition  walls ;  and  although  that  alone  cost  them 
near  two  hours,  they  cut  down  the  cupola  or  lanthorn, 
and  they  began  to  take  the  slate  and  boards  from  the 
roof,  and  were  prevented  only  by  the  approaching  day- 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  loi 

light  from  a  total  demolition  of  the  building."  From 
Governor  Bernard's  proclamation  we  learn,  moreover, 
that  all  the  contents  of  the  house,  wearing  apparel, 
jewels,  wine  and  liquors,  plate,  money  to  the  amount 
of  ^9^^  sterHng,  were  destroyed  and  stolen.  In  the 
general  ruin  disappeared  also  many  valuable  papers 
intended  for  use  in  Hutchinson's  history  of  the  prov- 
ince. In  the  winter  of  1900  a  great  black  glass  bottle 
of  unusual  shape  was  displayed  in  a  Boston  curiosity 
shop  as  a  relic  of  the  sack  of  Hutchinson's  house.  The 
bottle  —  if  it  was  what  it  pretended  to  be  —  had  sur- 
vived one  hundred  and  thirty-five  years.  The  spirits 
it  once  contained,  and  the  still  more  precious  docu- 
ments and  manuscripts  of  their  common  owner,  pre- 
sumably shared  in  1765  the  lot  of  perishable  things. 

It  was  of  no  practical  service  to  Hutchinson  that 
on  the  day  after  his  house  was  destroyed  the  better 
element  of  the  town  expressed  itself  forcibly  in  town- 
meeting  in  condemnation  of  the  outrage,  or  that  the 
Stamp  Act  was  subsequently  repealed,  to  the  great 
delight  of  the  people  both  in  Boston  and  in  London. 
It  mattered  not  that  Franklin,  by  securing  and  giving 
forth  private  letters  which  Hutchinson  had  written  to 
England  against  the  popular  cause,  brought  upon  him- 
self in  London  the  bitterest  charges  of  unscrupulous 
dealings.  In  the  eyes  of  his  own  people  Hutchinson 
was  made  by  every  circumstance  to  appear  a  traitor. 
After  General  Gage,  supported  by  his  army,  became 
mihtary  governor  in  May  of  1774,  the  last  of  the  civil 
magistrates  sailed  away  to   England,  on  the  first  of 


I02  BOSTON 

June,  regarding  himself  as  an  exile.  In  the  mother- 
country  he  wrote  the  pathetic  words,  "  I  had  rather 
die  in  a  little  country  farmhouse  in  New  England  than 
in  the  best  nobleman's  seat  in  Old  England,  and  have 
therefore  given  no  ear  to  any  proposal  of  settling  here." 
Yet  in  Old  England  he  died,  homesick  and  shattered, 
three  years  before  the  Revolution  of  which  he  had 
tried  to  check  the  beginnings  was  ended^ 

To  carry  to  completeness  our  plan  of  looking  at 
separate  personages  of  the  Revolutionary  period,  in 
Boston,  a  long  gallery  even  of  partial  portraits  would 
be  required.  Tories  and  patriots  with  equal  claims  to 
New  England  inheritances,  would  face  each  other  now 
as  of  old.  On  the  one  side  of  the  wall  John  Adams, 
shrewd  and  effective,  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  and  Joseph 
Warren,  the  young  impulsive  spokesman  of  a  nation 
waiting  to  be  born,  would  look  across  at  such  loyal 
"  prerogative  men  "  as  Timothy  Ruggles  and  Andrew 
Oliver  on  the  other.  The  distinguished  form  and  face 
of  John  Hancock,  whose  wealth  and  personal  grace 
made  him  everywhere  a  commanding  figure,  ready  at 
the  proper  moment  to  write  his  name  where  all  subse- 
quent generations  must  read  it,  would  stand  forth 
conspicuous.  Others,  great  and  small,  would  take 
their  historic  places  in  the  picturesque  assemblage. 
But  in  the  perspective  of  great  events,  the  person 
becomes  of  smaller  consequence  than  the  thing  with 
which  he  had  to  do.  Thus  for  a  time  Boston  itself 
becomes  the  central  figure  of  the  story. 

The  YCoiajpittee  of  Correspondence,  proposed    by 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  103 

Samuel  Adams  in  November  of  1772,  and  immedi- 
ately created  by  the  town-meeting,  was  essentiallythe 
expression,  of  the  town  spirit.  Berore  long  indeed  it 
"Became  the  local  government,  taking  the  empty  place 
of  the  chartered  authorities  thrust  aside  in  the  general 
upheaval.  Its  chief  service,  however,  like  that  of  the 
similar  Committee  of  the  Massachusetts  Assembly, 
was  to  keep  the  other  towns  of  the  province  and  the 
other  provinces  informed  of  the  progress  of  the  strug- 
gle between  the  crown  and  its  New  England  subjects. 
The  importance  of  the  whole  network  of  Committees 
of  Correspondence  in  placing  the  scattered  resistance 
of  the  colonies  upon  a  common  ground,  and  in  prepar- 
ing the  way  for  the  Continental  Congress  has  never  yet 
been  overrated  by  the  historians  who  have  treated  the 
subject  in  detail. 

As  a  town,  also,  Boston  found  itself  called  upon  to 
deal  with  the  difficult  problems  presented  by  the  harm- 
less commodity  of  tea.  Among  the  articles  taxed  by 
the  Townshend  Revenue  Bill,  passed  by  ParHament  in 
1767,  was  tea.  There  appeared  no  better  way  to  avoid 
paying  these  taxes  than  to  refrain  from  buying  and 
using  the  articles  taxed.  Non-importation  agreements 
were  so  general  and  so  faithfully  fulfilled  that  British 
commerce  began  to  feel  their  baleful  effect.  The  w^ear- 
ing  of  black  for  mourning  was  abandoned  because  black 
cloth  was  imported.  That  there  might  be  more  wool 
for  home  manufacture  of  clothing,  lambs  were  spared, 
and  the  people  ate  mutton  or  went  without  the  flesh 
of  sheep.     With  the  hope  of  mending  matters  Lord 


fViLLJAM  JACKS  O  N, 

r^  J M PORT E  R'.'xt   the 
B  RAZE  N   HEAD,  ; 

North  Side  f/thc  TOWN-HOUSE/ 
and  Oppofifc  the     Toizm-Punip^  in       •■ 
Coni'hilly    B  O  S  T  O  N.  ; 


It    is    delircd    that    the   Soxs   an.- 
DAiciiTERs  of  L  I B  E  RTj\ 

would   not  buy  any  one  th: 
hin\  h)r  m  lb  doing  the)'  will  br    , 
Difgracc  upon  ^/vA^yf/wV^,  and  tn.-- 
.         Poficnfy^  tor  (vcr  and  cva\  AMKN 

-^ '  ■'  •  ■  > " 

Broadside  in  possession  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  105 

North  proposed  in  1769,  and  carried  out  in  1770,  a 
plan  to  remove  the  detested  taxes  —  on  everything  but 
tea.  To  abandon  that  would  have  been  to  admit  the 
possibility  that  the  principle  for  which  the  colonists 
were  standing  out  was  right.  That  the  people  of 
Boston  were  contending  for  a  principle  may  be  inferred 
from  the  estimate  that  in  1768  fifteen  hundred  families 
out  of  the  two  thousan.d^n  the  town  had  totally  given 
up  the  use  of  tea.  The  most  patriotic  palate  could 
hardly  have  found  a  pleasing  substitute  in  the  "  Liberty 
Tea"  made  from  the  leaves  of  the  four-leaved  loose- 
strife, basted  with  the  juice  from  the  boiled  stalks  of 
the  same  plant,  and  dried  in  an  oven.  Yet  women, 
young  and  old,  were  as  ready  as  the  men  to  register 
themselves  on  signed  agreements  as  total  abstainers 
from  the  more  grateful  cup. 

When  even  the  powerful  East  India  Company  found 
itself  embarrassed  by  an  excess  of  unsold  tea  in  its 
English  storehouses,  its  influence  was  brought  to  bear 
upon  Parliarnent,  jiid_2ermission  was  granted  in  1773 
for  the  export  of  tea  to  America  without  thejpaj^ment 
of  duties  in  KngTand.  THus^lt  was  hoped,  the  price 
could  be  made  so  low  in  the  colonies  that  the  tempta- 
tion to  buy  could  not  be  resisted.  Yet  this  was  neither 
the  first  nor  the  last  time  that  English  authorities  have 
failed  to  realize  how  truly  the  British  quality  of  per- 
sistence had  come  to  the  new  world  with  its  settlers. 

Informed  that  tea-ships  were  on  the  way  to  Boston, 
and  that  tea  commissioners  or  consignees  had  been  ap- 
pointed to  receive  their  contents,  the  people  promptly 


T06 


BOSTON 


and  squarely  faced  the  problem  before  them.  The 
tea  commissioners  were  called  upon  to  resign,  and 
refused.  The  owner  and  the  captain  of  the  first  vessel 
to  arrive,  November  28,  1773,  were  told  that  her  entry 

at  the  custom-house  would  be 
made  at  their  peril.  A  few 
days  later  two  other  ships  ap- 
peared. The  town-meeting, 
directed  by  the  Committee  of 
Correspondence,  was  deter- 
mined that  the  tea  should  go 
back,  and  that  without  paying 
a  penny  of  duty.  Only  with 
clearance  papers  could  the  ves^ 


Francis  Rotch,  Owner  of 

Tea-ship  Dartmouth. 

Silhouette  in  possession  of  the 

Bostonian  Society. 


sers_JegallyLjeave  Boston  har- 
bor  and  enter  an  English  port. 
The  collector  of  customs  re- 
fused l-hpqp  papers^  nor  y^nnlri 
Governor  Hutchinson  grant 
the  pass  which  would  have 
Furthermore  the  con- 


permitted  the  vessels  to  sail 
tents  oT  the  ships,  if  not  discharged  within  twenty  days 
of  arrival,  were  liable  to  confiscation.  If  ever  men 
were  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea,  the  con- 
signees and  masters  of  the  tea-ships  must  have  felt 
themselves  in  such  a  plight.  On  the  afternoon  of  the 
1 6th  of  December  the  Old  South  Meeting-house  held 
what  it  could  of  the  crowd  of  seven  thousand  which 
had  gathered  from  town  and  country.  Before  the 
speeches  of  Samuel  Adams,  Quincy,  and  others  were 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


107 


ended,  a  few  candles  were  lighted  in  the  darkening 
building.  At  six  the  owner  of  the  ship  Dartmouth 
entered  and  announced  the  Governor's  final  refusal  to 
permit  the  vessel  to  sail.  From  that  moment  the 
working-out  of  a  carefully  planned  programme  was  ap- 
parent. "  This  meeting  can  do  no  more  to  save  the 
country,"  said  Adams.  A  war-whoop  sounded  from 
the  porch,  and  a  band  of  perhaps  fifty  men  dressed 
as  Indians  and  known  to  history  as  "the  Mohawks  " 
hurried  from  the  meeting-house  to  Griffin's  (afterwards 
Liverpool)  Wharf,  where  the  tea-ships  lay.  ..Jffixbin 
three  hours  342  chests  of  tea  were  thrown  overboard 
without  noise  or  opposition  All  the  scenes  of  the 
strange  little  drama  Tiad  been  so  well  arranged  that 
when  the  play  was  done  actors  and  spectators  returned 
to  their  homes  as  soberly  as  if  they  had  taken  part  in 
nothing  more  theatric  than  a  Thursday  lecture.  But 
Paul  Revere  rode  fast  with  the  news  of  it  to  New 
York  and  Philadelphia,  which  shared  the  joy  of 
Boston  that  since  the  law^  had  served  the  people's 
purpose  so  poorly,  they  had  taken  it  into  their  own 
hands  with  a  dignity  and  eff^ectiveness  that  left  little  to 
be  wished. 

If  the  whole  tea  affair  best  illustrates  the  manner  of 
Boston  in  dealing  with  its  problems,  the  immediate 
action  of  the  British  government  shoVs  no  less  clearly 
how  it  sought  to  disciphne  its  troublesome  dependency. 
In  j[;he  spring  of  1774  Parliament  passed  the  Boston^ 
Port  Bill  whereby  all  privilegesjjLf  Boston  as  a.  seapori: 
were  annulled.     To  say  nothing  of  distant  commerce. 


io8  BOSTON 

every  communication  by  water,  even  with  Charlestown 
and  Dorchester,  was  cut  off.  The  seat  of  government 
was  moved  to  Salem,  and  Marblehead  became  the  port 
of  entry  for  the  district.  Swift  on  the  heels  of  the 
Port  Bill  came  the  Regulation  Acts,  providing  for 
the  appointment  by  King  or  Governor  of  local  officers 
hitherto  elected,  abolishing  town-meetings  except  under 
specific  conditions,  transferring  to  Nova  Scotia  or  Eng- 
land the  trial  of  officials  charged  with  capital  offences, 
and  quartering  troops  on  the  towns  of  the  province. 
It  is  not  surprising  that  General  Gage,  fresh  in  the  post 
of  military  governor,  found  the  laws  hard  to  enforce 
—  even  with  royal  troops  behind  him. 

"  We  were  not  the  revolutionists,"  declared  the 
orator  of  the  day  at  Lexington  a  century  after  the 
battle.  "  The  King  and  Parliament  were  the  ^Revo- 
lutionists. They  were  the  radical  innovators.  We 
were  the  conservators  of  existing  institutions."  The 
old  form  of  local  government  gone,  the  Committee  of 
Correspondence  stood  ready  to  fill  the  gap.  How 
the  people  bore  their  part  under  the  new  order  Lord 
Percy,  stationed  in  Boston  under  General  Gage,  clearly 
saw.  "  They  say,"  he  wrote  home  to  England,  "  that 
since  the  town-meetings  are  forbid  by  the  act,  they 
shall  not  hold  them ;  but  as  they  do  not  see  any 
mention  made  of  county  meetings,  they  shall  hold 
them  for  the  future.  They  therefore  go  a  mile  out 
of  town^  do  just  the  same  business  there  they  formerly 
did  in  Boston^  call  it  a  county  meetings  and  so  elude^ 
the  act."     Thus  at  Dedham  and  Milton,  in  Septem- 


Christ  Church,  Salem  Street. 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


III 


ber  of  1774,  were  passed  the  Suffolk  Resolves,  a  docu- 
ment looking  as  frankly  toward  a  broken  allegiance 
—  broken  first,  it  held,  through  the  actions  of  Parlia- 
ment —  as  the  later  Declaration  of  Independence 
itself.  By  that  time  there  was  a  Continental  Congress 
which  could  receive  with  hearty 
approval  these  Resolves,  car- 
ried to  Philadelphia  by  the 
indefatigable  Paul  Revere.  In 
the  next  month  there  was  a 
Provincial  Congress  of  Massa- 
chusetts, preparing  definitely 
for  military  defence,  and  urg- 
ing the  towns  to  form  compa- 
nies of  Minute  Men.  The 
fire  was  laid ;  only  fiint  and 
tinder  were  needed  to  light  \t/f 

For  the  supply  of  additional 
fuel  —  there  was  the  increase 
and  the  conduct  of  the  British 
troops  stationed  in  Boston.  The  Puritan  town  was 
the  last  place  in  which,  for  the  peace  of  its  inhabitants, 
flagrant  camp  followers  from  England  should  have 
appeared.  Furthermore,  "  on  Sundays,"  says  John 
Fiske,  "  the  soldiers  would  race  horses  on  the  Common, 
or  play  Yankee  Doodle  just  outside  the  church-doors 
during  services."  In  a  contemporary  record  one  may 
read  of  the  fate  of  an  honest  countryman  who  came 
from  Billerica  into  Boston  in  March  of  1775.  ^  British 
soldier  sold  him  a  worthless  gun.     Then  the  country- 


Paul  Revere. 
Bust  by  Robert  Kraus. 


112  BOSTON 

man  was  seized  for  breaking  the  law  against  trading 
with  soldiers.  The  next  morning  he  was  stripped, 
tarred,  and  feathered.  With  the  drum  and  fifes  of  the 
47th  Regiment  playing  Yankee  Doodle,  a  number 
of  officers,  sailors,  and  negroes  thereupon  paraded  him 
through  the  principal  streets  as  a  spectacle,  labelled 
"American  Liberty,  or  a  Specimen  of  Democracy." 
All  this  may  have  been  excellent  fooling  for  his 
Majesty's  soldiery,  but  at  the  same  time  it  was  pre- 
cisely the  kind  of  kindling  which  added  brightness  to 
the  fires  of  Lexington  and  Bunker  Hill. 

The  lighting  of  these  fires,  with  flint-lock  and 
powder,  belongs  more  than  almost  any  other  matters 
of  local  record  in  America,  to  national  history.  So 
far  as  Boston  had  to  do  with  the  embattled  farmers 
of  Middlesex,  it  is  perhaps  enough  that  she  sent  forth 
Paul  Revere  to  prepare  them  for  Lord  Percy's  troops 
which  also  issued  from  Boston  and  so  rapidly  re- 
turned to  it.  Once  safely  back  in  the  town,  they 
were  to  remain  there,  through  the  vigilance  of  their 
American  besiegers,  for  eleven  long  months  after  the 
battle  of  Lexington ;  and  the  people  of  Boston,  mili- 
tary and  civilian,  must  still  be  our  chief  concern. 

Of  course  the  prime  exploit  of  the  military  portion 
of  the  population  was  the  costly  battle  of  Bunker  Hill 
in  Charlestown,  two  months  after  Lexington.  General 
Burgoyne's  private  report  of  the  "  victory  "  to  a  friend 
in  England  sounds  almost  prophetic  of  a  South  African 
despatch  of  1900.  Of  the  list  of  killed  and  wounded 
he  said,  "  If  fairly  given,  it  amounts  to  no  less  than 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  113 

ninety-two  officers,  many  of  them  an  irreparable  loss  — 
a  melancholy  disproportion  to  the  number  of  private 
soldiers."  The  victory  won  the  British  a  square  mile 
of  land  in  Charlestown  ;  but  it  was  not  of  the  sort  to 
be  "followed  up."     Indeed  it  did  not  even  raise  the 


PROSPECT  HILL. 

Seven  Dollars  a  Month.  —  — 

IL    Frefh  Provifions,  and  in  Plenty.    —       — 

III.  Health.        _  w.  _  _ 

IV.  Freedom,  Eafe,  Affluence  and  a  good  Farm. 


BUNKER'S  HILL. 

I.  Three  Pence  a  Day.  '., 

II.  Rotten  Salt  Pork.  - 

III.  The  Scurvy. 

IV.  Slaveiy,  Beggary  and  Want. 


Handbill  circulated  by  American  Sentries  and  the  Wind  in  the 
BRITISH  Lines  at  Charlestown  Neck. 

siege.  Nor  could  it  have  brought  either  to  the 
Americans  or  to  the  British  within  the  town  any  sense 
of  security  in  their  situation. 

The  Americans  whose  sympathies  were  with  the  army 
of  which  Washington,  as  commander-in-chief  of  the 
Continental  forces,  became  the  head  at  Cambridge, 
July  5,  1775,  found  themselves  in  perhaps  the  most 
difficult  situation  of  all.  In  their  old  homes,  cut  off 
from  their  friends  without,  they  were  amongst  strangers 
and  enemies.  Naturally  many  of  them  wished  to 
leave  the  town,  even  at  the  loss  of  treasured  posses- 
sions ;  and  terms  to  this  end  were  made  with  General 
Gage.  But  the  civilian  Tories  of  Boston  —  and  the 
soldiers,  too,  it  may  be  supposed  —  felt  safer  from 
bombardment  while  the   place  was   known  to  shelter 


114 


BOSTON 


General  Gage's  Headquarters,  Hull  Street,  North  End. 


many  friends  of  the  American  cause.  Accordingly 
Gage's  terms  for  their  departure  were  so  modified  as 
to  make  egress  a  most  difficult  matter.  In  spite  of 
all  the  obstacles,  however,  it  is  estimated  that  before 
the  end  of  June  not  far  from  twelve  thousand  persons 
had  managed  to  quit  the  beleaguered  town.  A  census 
taken  by  Gage's  order  in  July,  showed  that  the  remain- 
ing civilians  numbered  6573,  and  the  soldiery  13,500. 
For  all  these,  and  for  the  Tories  from  without,  who 
sought  and  won  admission  within  the  lines  of  siege, 
bitter  times  were  in  store. 

The    question    of  food    supply    was    vital   enough. 
Beyond    what    the    promontory    itself    could    afford, 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  115 

reliance  had  to  be  placed  upon  seizures  from  the  har- 
bor islands  and  the  arrivals  of  supply  ships  fortunate 
enough  to  escape  the  Yankee  sailors  lying  in  wait  in 
Massachusetts  Bay.  In  May  came  one  of  the  disas- 
trous fires  from  which  Boston  has  periodically  suffered. 
In  November  still  another  of  the  plagues  of  old  Boston 
appeared,  —  an  epidemic  of  smallpox.  Scantily  pre- 
pared for  a  New  England  winter,  hundreds  of  the 
poorer  people  were  banished  by  military  order  to 
Chelsea  and  Point  Shirley.  The  good  people  left  in 
the  town  had  the  misery  of  seeing  their  houses  of 
worship  desecrated  or  destroyed.  One  was  used  as  a 
stable ;  two  became  barracks,  and  two  storehouses 
for  provisions.  Another,  torn  down,  with  a  hundred 
wooden  dwelling-houses,  met  the  fate  of  fire-wood. 
The  Old  South  went  the  way  of  a  riding-school  for 
dragoons,  and  in  Timothy  Newell's  diary  it  is  recorded 
that  "  the  beautiful  carved  pew  with  the  silk  furniture 
of  Deacon  Hubbard's  was  taken  down  and  carried  to 

's  house  by  an  officer  and  made  a  hog-stye." 

Dear  as  the  churches  in  the  eyes  of  the  people  was 
the  Liberty  Tree.  Its  fame  had  spread  so  far  that 
even  in  England  a  friend  of  the  colonies,  dying  at  about 
this  time,  left  a  will  devising  a  comfortable  fortune  to 
two  persons  of  his  acquaintance  if  they  would  surely 
bury  his  body  in  the  shadow  of  the  Tree.  Through- 
out the  ten  years  since  Andrew  Oliver's  effigy  had 
hung  from  its  branches,  it  had  been  the  rallying-point 
of  Liberty.  It  had  become  a  symbol  —  Hke  the  mace 
to  Cromwell,  the  Bastille  to  the  mob  of  Paris  —  and 


ii6  BOSTON 

was  doomed.  In  August  of  1775  a  party  of  British 
soldiers  proceeded  to  do  away  with  it.  "  After  a  long 
spell  of  laughing  and  grinning,  sweating  and  swear- 
ing, and  foaming  with  malice  diabolical"  —  wrote  an 
American  journalist  of  the  time  —  "they  cut  down  a 
tree,  because  it  bore  the  name  of  liberty."  In  the 
record  a  week  later  that  one  of  the  soldiers  "  in  attempt- 
ing to  dismantle  it  of  one  of  its  branches,  fell  on  the 
pavement,  by  which  he  was  instantly  killed,"  the  note 
of  triumph  is  not  hard  to  detect. 

It  were  hard-hearted,  however,  to  grudge  the  soldiers 
of  General  Gage  all  their  diversions.  The  Constitu- 
tional Gazette  of  October  i,  1775,  quoted  the  saying 
that  his  army  was  then  divided  into  three  companies  : 
"  the  first  company  is  under  ground ;  the  second  is 
above  ground ;  the  third  is  in  the  hospital ;  and  the 
general  has  received  express  orders  from  home  for 
the  second  and  third  companies  to  march  and  follow 
the  first."  If  the  true  plight  of  the  men  was  even 
suggested  by  this  hyperbole,  surely  the  officers  had 
need  of  all  such  cheer  as  the  place  could  afford.  It 
may  be  that  some  of  them  took  comfort  in  the  song 
they  sang  about  the  wife  the  "Yankee  king"  had 
married,  after  eluding  capture  on  the  night  of  the 
march  to  Lexington  and  making  his  way  to  the  Conti- 
nental Congress  in  Philadelphia  :  — 

*'  Madam  Hancock  dreamt  a  dream  : 
^  She  dreamt  she  wanted  something  ; 

She  dreamt  she  wanted  a  Yankee  king. 
To  crown  with  a  pumpkin." 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON  117 

For  the  more  definite  entertainment  of  the  officers  the 
Tory  ladles  in  Boston  did  what  they  could.  Dances 
and  assemblies  were  held  in  the  Concert  Hall ;  and 
the  very  cradle  of  liberty  —  Faneuil  Hall  itself — was 
devoted  to  amateur  theatricals  acted  by  officers  and 
the  less  prudish  of  the  ladies.  General  Burgoyne, 
who  with  CHnton  and  Howe  had  come  to  the  rehef 
of  Gage  in  the  early  days  of  the  siege,  directed  a  series 
of  these  performances  in  the  autumn,  and  wrote  pro- 
logue and  epilogue  in  verse  for  the  tragedy  of  Zara. 
On  a  January  evening  of  1776,  when  Gage  had  been 
recalled  and  Howe  had  held  the  command  for  three 
months,  a  farce,  The  Blockade  of  Boston^  was  pre- 
sented at  Faneuil  Hall.  Howe  was  one  of  the  audi- 
ence amused  by  the  appearance  on  the  stage  of  a 
caricatured  Washington,  bearing  a  rusty  sword  and 
attended  by  a  grotesque  squire.  While  these  two 
figures  held  the  boards,  a  sergeant  burst  into  the  hall 
shouting,  "  The  Yankees  are  attacking  our  works  on 
Bunker's  Hill."  Those  who  took  the  interruption 
for  a  part  of  the  play  were  soon  undeceived  by  the 
sharp  command  of  Howe,  "  Officers,  to  your  alarm 
posts  !  "  With  the  crowding  of  the  doors,  the  shriek- 
ing and  fainting  of  women,  the  performance  came  to 
a  sudden  end ;  and  over  in  Charlestown  a  glow  of  fire 
showed  where  some  Yankee  soldiers  had  succeeded  in 
burning  a  few  houses,  and  in  capturing  five  and  killing 
one  of  their  enemies.  The  Blockade  of  Boston  was 
a  bit  of  realism  in  advance  of  its  time. 

While  these  by-plays  of  war  were   going   forward. 


ii8  BOSTON 

Washington  at  Cambridge,  and  Howe  in  Boston,  were 
struggling  with  its  problems  on  a  large  scale.  Each 
felt  the  weakness  of  his  position,  and  feared  assault 
from  the  other.  Washington's  problem  lay  in  organ- 
izing what  he  called  his  "  army  of  undisciplined  hus- 
bandmen," and  in  the  poverty  of  his  ammunition. 
When  complaints  of  inaction  arose,  he  could  not  even 
silence  them,  for  fear  of  revealing  his  true  weakness. 
For  Howe  the  problem  was  in  part  geographical  and 
in  part  —  like  Washington's  —  a  matter  of  supplies. 
For  him  and  for  his  predecessor  the  home  government 
could  or  would  do  much  less  than  hope  and  necessity 
demanded.  So  the  months  dragged  on,  neither  com- 
mander caring  or  daring  to  make  the  first  important 
move. 

Unimportant  skirmishes  were  frequent  throughout 
the  course  of  the  siege.  But  it  was  not  till  the  night 
of  the  4th  of  March,  1776,  that  Washington  could 
carry  out  his  cherished,  hazardous  plan  of  intrenching 
guns  and  troops  on  Dorchester  Heights  —  now  South 
Boston  —  commanding  the  harbor  and  a  vulnerable 
part  of  the  town.  The  movement,  which  the  British 
themselves  might  have  achieved  more  easily,  took 
Howe  completely  by  surprise.  .  When  he  woke  on 
the  morning  of  March  5,  the  anniversary  of  the 
"  Massacre"  of  1770,  it  was  plain  that  if  the  Heights 
could  not  be  wrested  from  Washington's  men,  Boston 
must  be  abandoned.  A  large  detachment  of  British 
troops  embarked  before  nightfall  to  drive  the  Conti- 
nentals from  their  place  of  vantage.     This  time,  how- 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


119 


ever,  the  winds  which  had  destroyed  an  armada  fought 
against  England  —  and  while  the  British  boats  were 
driven  whither  they  would  not,  the  Americans  gained 
time  to  fortify  their  new  posi- 
tion against  all  possibilities 
of  capture.  The  inevitable 
end  of  the  British  occupa- 
tion of  Boston  was  clearly  in 
sight. 

It  was  not  wholly  a  simple 
matter  for  Washington  and 
Howe  to  arrive  at  the  tacit 
understanding  that  if  his  Maj- 
esty's troops  would  quietly 
withdraw  from  the  town 
there  would  be  no  bombard- 
ment. Direct  communication 
between  the  two  generals 
was  impossible  when  one  of 
them  would  address  the  other 
by  no  military  title  conferred 
by  an  upstart  congress,  and 
that  other,  the  victor,  was, 
by  the  law  he  recognized, 
no  longer  plain  Mr.  Wash- 
ington. W^hen  a  British  offi- 
cer afterward  suggested  that 
"  George  Washington,  etc.,  etc.,  etc.,"  would  include 
everything^  Washington  shrewdly  objected  that  it  might 
no  less  truly  include  anything.     Nevertheless   it  was 


Tower  on  Dorchester  Heights, 
commemorating  the  evacu- 
ATION OF  Boston. 


I20  BOSTON 

indirectly  arranged  that  if  the  British  would  leave  the 
town  intact,  they  might  do  so  unharmed. 

"  It  was  not  like  breaking  up  a  camp,  where  every 
man  knows  his  duty,"  wrote  one  who  took  part  in  the 
evacuation  ;  "  it  was  like  departing  your  country,  with 
your  wives,  your  servants,  your  household  furniture, 
and  all  your  incumbrances."  To  these  impedimenta 
the  large  number  of  Tory  citizens,  with  everything  to 
lose  if  they  or  their  possessions  should  be  left  behind, 
added  much.  Transports  which  should  have  carried 
the  King's  goods  were  filled  with  their  household  wares. 
Aside  from  all  this  lifeless  freight,  there  were  the  mili- 
tary, nearly  nine  thousand  in  number,  and  eleven  hun- 
dred Tories  and  their  families  to  be  carried  away  in  the 
seventy-eight  available  ships  and  transports.  The  sight 
of  Washington's  batteries  kept  reminding  them  all  that 
they  were  not  to  loiter.  Cannon  and  stores  which 
could  not  be  embarked  must  not  be  left  to  enrich  the 
Continentals.  Even  General  Gage's  chariot  was  tipped 
off  the  end  of  a  wharf  into  the  harbor.  Confusion 
indescribable  was  everywhere.  Yet  in  twelve  days  the 
sorry  fleet  set  sail  for  Hahfax.  To  this  day  the  good 
Bostonian,  seeing  the  flags  flying  each  17th  of  March, 
tells  his  children  that  it  is  not  the  feast  of  Saint 
Patrick,  but  the  final  departure  of  British  troops  from 
Boston  streets  and  Common,  which  has  this  public 
sign. 

There  was  little  to  relieve  the  gloom  of  the  British 
departure  —  and  much  to  temper  the  joy  of  the  Ameri- 
can recovery.     The  deserted  town,  where  the  entering 


REVOLUTIONARY    BOSTON 


121 


soldiers  were  followed  before  long  by  the  civilians,  had 
its  story  clearly  written  on  its  face.  On  every  side 
was  havoc.  Disease  was  in  the  air.  Torture-traps 
and  obstacles  stood  in  the  way  of  the  first  comers. 
There  were  sorrowful  reunions  of  families,  which  now 
fell  to  counting  their  losses  —  of  property  and  lives. 
When  Washington 
himself  came  over 
from  Dorchester  in  a 
boat  on  the  i8thj  and 
dined  with  James 
Bowdoin,  Jr.,  we  are 
told  that  no  greater 
luxury  could  be  set 
before  him  than  a 
piece  of  salted  beef. 
Yet  the  first  great  vic- 
tory was  won.  If  Bos- 
ton for  fifteen  years 
had  been  the  chief 
thorn  in  the  side  of  the 
English  colonial  authorities,  she  had  paid  full  measure 
for  the  distinction,  and  had  earned  the  immunity  from 
the  uses  of  a  battleground  which  she  enjoyed  through 
all  the  remainder  of  the  war. 

When  the  news  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
reached  Boston,  on  July  i8,  the  town  sheriff  read  the 
instrument  to  the  assembled  people.  Then  many  such 
emblems  of  royalty  as  the  arms  from  the  Town  House 
were  brought  together  and  publicly  burned.    The  next 


Gold  Medal  commemorating  Washing- 
ton's Victory. 
In  possession  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 


122  BOSTON 

year  the  Fourth  of  July  itself  was  celebrated  with  a 
parade,  a  sermon  before  the  Legislature,  a  public 
dinner,  and  much  cannonading.  In  the  summer  of 
1778  a  French  fleet  came  into  the  harbor,  and  though 
the  officers  received  less  attention  than  Mrs.  John 
Adams  thought  their  due.  General  Heath,  command- 
ing the  American  troops  stationed  at  Boston,  did  what 
was  fitting,  and  John  Hancock  gave  a  "  superb  ball " 
in  their  honor  at  Concert  Hall.  The  building  and 
fitting  out  of  ships,  and  the  arrival  from  time  to  time 
of  British  prizes  taken  by  Yankee  vessels,  marked  the 
gradual  return  of  Boston  to  its  place  as  the  chief  sea- 
port of  the  new  country  struggling  into  existence. 
But  the  war  itself  was  elsewhere.  To  its  conduct  by 
Congress,  at  sea  and  in  the  field,  Boston  gave  of  its 
leaders  —  the  Adamses,  Hancock,  and  others  —  and 
of  its  sailors  and  soldiers.  Its  people  were  ready  to 
rejoice  at  the  good  tidings  of  the  surrender  of  Corn- 
wallis.  A  sentence  of  Samuel  Breck's  brings  back  the 
scene  on  the  Common,  when  "  a  huge  pyramid  of 
cord-wood,  fifty  feet  high,  was  piled  up  in  the  middle 
of  the  green  and  fired  at  night."  With  the  dying  of 
this  fire  Revolutionary  Boston  passes  out  of  view.  In 
its  place  we  see  the  capital  town,  no  longer  of  colony 
or  province,  but  of  Massachusetts,  ready  to  take  its 
place  in  the  sisterhood  of  sovereign  states. 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY 


NO  reader  of  Hawthorne  needs 
to  be  reminded  of  the  haunt- 
ing picture  of"  Howe's  Masquerade," 
in  which  "  the  funeral  procession  of 
royal  authority  in  New  England " 
passes  down  the  steps  of  the  Prov- 
ince House  into  the  dark- 
ness of  the  night.  It  is 
one  of  those  scenes,  made 
for  and  by  the  pen  of 
Hawthorne,  in  which  the 
colors  of  imagination 
paint  essential  truths. 
With  the  passing  of  the 
royal  authority  the  old  order  underwent  its  final  change. 
In  the  train  of  the  royal  authority  departed  from 
Boston,  as  we  have  seen,  more  than  a  thousand  Tories, 
the  men  and  women,  in  many  instances,  who  had  been 
the  foremost  persons  of  the  place.  The  rank  and  file 
of  the  democracy  in  revolt  remained,  and,  with  its 
handful  of  leaders,  became  the  democracy  in  control. 
But  the  places  hitherto  filled  by  men  of  wealth  and 
influence  were  not  to  stand  vacant.  The  aristocracy 
of  the  New  England  towns  in  general,  unlike  that  of 

123 


John  Hancock's  Tea-kettle  and 
Money  Trunk. 

In  possession  of  the  Bostonian  Society. 


124  BOSTON 

Boston,  had  been  for  the  most  part  in  opposition  to 
the  crown.  From  the  country,  then,  came  a  new  ele- 
ment of  leadership.  The  confiscated  houses  of  the 
royalist  refugees  were  in  the  market,  at  low  prices,  and 
soon  were  occupied  by  famihes  whose  names  have 
long  been  a  part  of  Boston  history.  To  quote  di- 
rectly Mr.  Lodge's  catalogue  of  this  peaceful  invasion, 
there  were  "  the  Adamses  and  Fisher  Ames  of  Nor- 
folk, the  Prescotts  from  Middlesex,  and  the.  Sullivans 
from  New  Hampshire ;  while  from  Essex,  most  pro- 
lific of  all,  came  the  Parsonses,  Pickerings,  Lees, 
Jacksons,  Cabots,  Lowells,  Grays,  and  Elbridge 
Gerry."  Thus  for  all  that  Boston  lost  in  the  de- 
parture of  its  Tory  gentry,  it  gained  perhaps  more 
in  this  accession  of  new  blood,  racier  of  the  soil, 
and  quickening  the  life  of  the  larger  town  with  all 
the  sturdy  New  England  standards  of  a  stock  which 
had  flourished  in  conditions  calling  for  the  best 
strength  of  manhood. 

But  the  newcomers  did  not  all  appear  immediately 
upon  the  scene,  and  for  the  management  of  town  and 
state  affairs  the  people  turned  instinctively  to  their 
old  leaders.  The  local  government,  interrupted  by  the 
King's  troops,  returned  at  once  to  the  hands  of  the 
town-meeting.  In  1779,  four  years  before  the  treaty 
of  peace  was  signed,  a  convention  met  in  Boston  to 
form  a  state  government  for  Massachusetts.  Its  pro- 
visions were  adopted  at  the  beginning  of  1780,  and 
John  Hancock,  by  far  the  most  conspicuous  figure  of 
the  town  and  the  state,  was  chosen  the  first  governor. 


FROM    TOWN   TO    CITY  125 

From  this  time  until  his  death  in  1793,  excepting  for 
the  two  years  of  1785  and  1786,  he  was  annually  re- 
elected to  the  governorship.  By  his  side,  as  lieuten- 
ant-governor stood,  as  of  old,  that  tried  servant  of  the 
people,  Samuel  Adams,  who  succeeded  him  in  the 
chief  magistracy. 

Through  the  daily  life  of  John  Hancock  one  may 
gain  many  glimpses  of  the  life  of  Boston  in  his  day. 
By  the  very  law  of  contrasts  John  Adams's  disapproval 
of  Hancock's  lavish  entertainments,  and  the  resulting 
estrangement  between  the  two  friends,  indicate  the 
general  simplicity  of  living.  The  common  friend 
who  brought  them  together  again  found  it  necessary 
to  defend  Hancock's  mode  of  life  in  print  as  "  impor- 
tant to  public  cheerfulness."  Against  the  reputed 
charge  of  John  Adams  that  Hancock  was  but  an 
"empty  barrel,"  Mr.  Lodge  arrays  the  significant 
words  :  "  He  stands  out  with  a  fine  show  of  lace  and 
velvet  and  dramatic  gout,  a  real  aristocrat,  shining 
and  resplendent  against  the  cold  gray  background  of 
every-day  life  in  the  Boston  of  the  days  after  the 
Revolution,  when  the  gay  official  society  of  the  Prov- 
ince had  been  swept  away."  There  is  indeed  a  win- 
ning picturesqueness  in  the  figure  of  the  handsome 
host  borne  by  attendants  into  the  dining  hall  large 
enough  for  fifty  or  sixty  guests,  and  reproving  the 
servant  who  drops  a  cut-glass  epergne  :  "  James,  break 
as  much  as  you  please,  but  don't  make  such  a  con- 
founded noise  about  it." 

Of  the  "dramatic  gout,"  two  episodes  in  the  pubhc 


126  BOSTON 

career  of  Hancock  yield  sufficient  illustration.  In  the 
Life  of  Josiah  ^incy  by  his  son  Edmund,  it  is 
related  that  Hancock  made  his  affliction  "an  excuse 
for  doing  as  he  pleased  in  political  as  well  as  social  life. 
Thus,  when  the  adoption  of  the  Federal  Constitution 
hung  doubtful  in  the  balance  in  the  Massachusetts 
convention  of  1788,  the  gout  was  made  the  convenient 
reason  for  his  staying  away,  until  he  was  made  to  see 
that  his  indecision  must  cease,  and  he  interfere  to 
secure  the  ratification.  My  father  was  in  the  gallery 
of  the  Old  South  Church  at  the  time,  and  used  to 
describe  how  Hancock,  wrapt  in  flannels,  was  borne 
in  men's  arms  up  the  broad  aisle,  when  he  made  the 
speech  which  caused  the  Constitution  to  be  accepted 
by  nineteen  majority."  It  is  worth  while  to  note  in 
passing,  the  influence  which  brought  Samuel  Adams  to 
the  support  of  the  Federal  Constitution,  of  which  at 
first  he  was  an  opponent.  Paul  Revere  and  other 
representatives  of  the  Boston  mechanics  bore  him  the 
report  of  an  enthusiastic  meeting  of  their  fellows  in 
favor  of  the  federal  scheme.  The  voice  of  the  people 
was  for  him  the  voice  to  heed  —  and  thus  his  influence 
was  secured  for  the  winning  side. 

It  was  the  year  after  Massachusetts  gave  her  vote 
for  the  Federal  Constitution,  that  is,  in  1789,  that 
Washington  paid  his  memorable  visit  to  Boston ;  and 
it  was  then  that  Hancock  made  a  second  effective  use 
of  his  gout.  At  the  town  line  vv^here  Washington  was 
received,  the  selectmen  and  the  sheriff  representing  the 
invalid  governor  quarrelled  over  the  control  of  the  pro- 


The  Hancock  House,  Beacon  Street. 


FROM    TOWN   TO    CITY  129 

cession.  Hancock's  man,  after  threatening  "  to  make 
a  hole  through  "  certain  officials  of  the  town,  had  his 
way.  The  resulting  delay  gave  many  persons  what 
was  called  a  "  Washington  cold."  The  first  Presi- 
dent's progress  through  the  street,  which  in  different 
parts  was  called  Orange,  Newbury,  and  Marlborough, 
and  from  that  time  forth  has  borne  the  single  name  of 
Washington,  was  indeed  triumphal.  Crowds  of  cheer- 
ing people  lined  the  way,  near  the  end  of  which  an 
elaborate  arch  of  welcome  was  erected.  At  the  State 
House  Washington  dismounted  from  his  white  charger, 
and  took  his  place  on  a  platform  while  a  chorus  sta- 
tioned in  the  arch  near  at  hand  sang  an  ode  in  his 
praise.  When  the  shouting  and  the  tumult  died, 
where  was  Hancock?  Holding  himself  to  be  chief 
of  the  local  state,  he  felt  that  it  was  Washington's 
place  as  a  visitor  from  abroad  to  come  and  pay  him  his 
respects  —  and  so  he  waited.  On  the  other  hand 
Washington  had  never  lacked  a  sense  of  his  own 
dignity,  and  justly  regarding  the  state  of  Massachu- 
setts as  inferior  to  the  Union  of  which  he  was  presi- 
dent, he  also  waited.  For  a  while  it  looked  as  if  the 
visit  so  brilliantly  begun  might  come  to  an  uncomfort- 
able end.  Just  here  it  was  that  the  gout  was  made  to 
save  the  situation.  There  were  those  indeed  who  said 
that  the  state  of  Hancock's  health  was  an  all-sufficient 
excuse  for  his  failure  to  greet  the  President.  The  com- 
mon belief,  however,  was,  and  is,  that  Hancock  soon 
saw  himself  to  be  in  the  wrong,  and  the  next  day  lay- 
ing  hold   on   the   best  available  excuse,  had   himself 

K 


ijo  BOSTON 

elaborately  swathed  and  borne  on  the  shoulders  of 
attendants  to  Washington's  lodgings,  where  he  ex- 
plained away  the  apparent  incivility  to  the  satisfaction 
of  all  concerned.  The  President's  visit,  after  this 
episode,  went  prosperously  forward,  and  served  to 
strengthen  the  popular  loyalty  to  the  federal  party  of 
which  he  was  the  acknowledged  head. 

It  is  told  of  Hancock  on  the  occasion  of  another 
distinguished  visit  —  that  of  the  French  fleet  of  which 
he  entertained  the  officers  —  that  needing  more  milk 
than  his  own  cows  could  supply,  he  gave  orders  for  the 
milking  of  all  the  cows  on  the  Common,  regardless  of 
ownership.  The  absence  of  all  protest  against  such  a 
proceeding  bespoke  an  almost  apostolic  community  of 
spirit  and  property.  The  people  may  well  have  re- 
joiced to  feel  themselves  represented  by  their  Governor 
and  his  lady,  both  at  their  own  mansion  and  at  the 
return  entertainment  on  the  flagship  of  the  fleet. 

From  the  gentlemen  of  the  French  navy  Hancock 
could  turn  with  pleasure  to  one  Balch,  a  Boston  hatter, 
whose  shop  was  a  favorite  lounging-place.  Here  the 
Governor  bandied  jokes  with  the  hatter  and  his  friends, 
and  with  mock  seriousness  discussed  the  puzzhng  prob- 
lems of  his  administration.  One  of  the  people  again 
he  seems  to  be  while  paying  his  fine  for  violating  the 
Sunday  law  by  driving  not  directly  home  from  church. 
Even  so  late  as  the  time  of  Hancock's  governorship  — 
in  the  closing  years  of  the  eighteenth  century  —  the 
Sunday  customs  retained  much  of  their  Puritanic 
rigor.     To  recall  them  is  to  remind  ourselves  of  one 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  131 

of  the  most  conspicuous  social  changes  wrought  by  the 
century  that  followed. 

Under  the  laws  which  caused  Hancock's  arrest,  it 
was  not  permitted  to  drive  a  hackney  coach  in  or  out 
of  Boston  between  the  Sunday  hours  of  midnight  and 
sunset  without  a  warrant  from  a  Justice  of  the  Peace  ; 
and  during  the  hours  of  service  no  vehicle  in  the  town 
was  allowed  to  move  faster  than  a  walk.  The  enforce- 
ment in  1802  of  the  law  against  Sabbath-breakers  for 
bathing  at  the  foot  of  the  Common  called  forth  some 
verses  in  the  Centinel,  which  suggest  that  everybody  in 
the  town  was  not  of  one  way  of  thinking :  — 

**In  Superstition's  days,  'tis  said. 
Hens  laid  two  eggs  on  Monday y 
Because  a  hen  would  lose  her  head 
That  laid  an  egg  on  Sunday. 

Now  our  wise  rulers  and  the  law 
Say  none  shall  wash  on  Sunday ; 
So  Boston  folks  must  dirty  go. 
And  wash  them  twice  on  Monday." 

Outside  of  Boston  this  Sunday  severity  was  prob- 
ably even  greater  than  in  the  town  itself.  In  Quincy, 
at  the  time  of  Lafayette's  visit,  when  nearly  a  quarter 
of  the  nineteenth  century  was  spent,  the  people  stood 
silent  as  the  beloved  guest  drove  through  the  streets 
on  Sunday ;  decorum  forbade  a  single  cheer.  When 
Samuel  Breck  in  179 1  was  called  upon  to  meet  his 
father  one  Sunday  in  Worcester,  he  anticipated  trouble 
on  the  journey,  "and  determined" — as  his  RecoUec- 


132  BOSTON 

tions  say  —  "to  try  what  could  be  done  under  the 
assumed  character  of  a  Frenchman.  Having  a  letter 
to  deliver  at  the  tavern  nearest  to  the  meeting-house, 
and  to  which  I  knew  I  should  be  sent  in  case  of  arrest, 
I  affected  not  to  understand  English  when  I  gave  in 
the  letter.  The  house  of  worship  stood  upon  a  hill, 
at  the  foot  of  which  I  saw  the  congregation  descend- 
ing. In  the  very  front  came  the  deacon  on  horseback, 
^  with  a  long  staff  in  his  hands  and  his  wife  on  a  piUion 
behind.  He  ordered  me  to  stop,  and  with  a  magis- 
terial air  inquired  why  I  travelled  on  the  Lord's  Day. 
I  answered  him  in  French,  upon  which  he  raised  his 
voice  to  a  pitch  of  authoritative  anger  and  repeated 
his  question.  I  replied  by  a  string  of  French  words 
and  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders,  significative  of  my 
ignorance  of  his  question  ;  when,  finding  himself  per- 
plexed, he  motioned  to  me  to  go  about  my  business." 
Less  ingenuity  was  displayed  by  the  judges  of  the 
Massachusetts  court,  travelling  with  the  Attorney- 
General  through  the  district  of  Maine  before  it  was  a 
state.  To  keep  a  court  appointment  these  interpreters 
of  the  law  were  forced  to  ignore  the  statute  against 
Sunday  travel.  Their  train  of  carriages  climbed  the 
hill  leading  to  the  Freeport  meeting-house  while  the 
good  people  of  the  village  were  within.  The  eyes  of 
the  warden,  however,  were  alert,  and  the  Sabbath- 
breakers  found  themselves  promptly  called  to  account. 
If  they  had  heeded  this  officer,  the  matter  might  have 
ended  there.  But  not  so ;  they  drove  on,  and  in  due 
season  the  grand  jury  of  Massachusetts,  at  the  instance 


FROM    TOWN   TO    CITY 


"^33 


of  the  Freeport  people,  indicted  them  for  their  offence. 
It  was  only  after  a  petition  from  the  judges  to  the 
Legislature,  and  a  full  measure  of  public  amusement, 
that  the  case  was  abandoned. 

For  a  contrast  with  present  conditions  correspond- 
ing to  that  which  the  Sunday  customs  afforded,  we 
have  to  look  at  the  beginnings  of  the  drama  in 
Boston.  As  early  as  1750  "An  Act  to  Prevent 
Stage  Plays  and  other  Theatrical  entertainments  "  gave 
expression  to  the  public  sentiment  which  assured  its 
enforcement.  After  the  Revolution  this  law  was  re- 
enacted,  in  1784.  But  the  British  officers  who  walked 
the  boards  of  Faneuil  Hall  were  not  far  in  advance  of 
a  general  interest  in  the  theatre.  A  town-meeting  in 
1 79 1,  influenced  by  men  of  enlightened  progress, 
called  upon  the  Legislature  to  repeal  the  existing  law. 
The  Legislature  refused — and  in  defiance  of  the  statute 
the  lovers  of  the  drama  proceeded  to  erect  a  stage  and 
to  open  what  they  called  the  "New  Exhibition  Room  " 
in  Board  Alley,  now  Hawley  Street.  Plays  were  ad- 
vertised as  "  moral  lectures,"  illustrating  this  or  that 
vice  or  virtue.  Otway's  Venice  Preserved  appeared  as 
such  a  lecture  in  five  parts,  "in  which  the  dreadful 
effects  of  conspiracy  will  be  exemplified."  To  make 
sure,  a  little  later,  that  the  point  of  Macbeth  should 
not  be  missed,  it  was  introduced  by  "A  Dialogue  on 
the  Horrid  Crime  of  Murder,  by  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Smith,"  Even  such  precautions,  however,  did  not 
protect  the  people  of  the  new  playhouse  from  the 
consequences  of  defying  the  law.     Governor  Hancock 


134 


BOSTON 


called  the  matter  to  the  attention  of  the  General  Court, 
and  on  a  night  of  December,  1792,  a  sheriff  with  a 
warrant  for  the  arrest  of  one  of  the  actors,  Harper  by- 
name, suddenly  appeared  among  the  dramatis  persons 
of  the  School  for  Scandal,  The  performance  came  to 
a  sudden  end,  though  the  house  could  not  be  closed 
till  a  portrait  of  the  Governor  had  been  pulled  down 
and  trampled  under  foot  by  the  young  men  of  the 
audience  who  knew  Hancock's  attitude  toward  the 
theatre.  "  Late  that  same  evening,"  to  quote  from 
Mr.  Amory's  Life  of  Hancock's  Attorney-General, 
James  Sullivan,  "  the  governor  was  seated  in  his  parlor 
surrounded  by. several  gentlemen  engaged  in  discuss- 
ing the  subject  of  the  arrest,  when  a  noise  in  the  hall 
attracted  their  attention.  Upon  opening  the  door,  he 
found  a  crowd  of  persons,  many  of  whom  were  sailors, 
who  in  reply  to  his  inquiry  as  to  the  object  of  their 
visit,  said  that  they  came  to  know  if  it  was  his  honor's 
wish  that  the  playhouse  should  be  pulled  down." 
From  such  a  course  the  Governor  wisely  dissuaded 
them.  The  next  day  it  appeared  clearly  that  the 
townspeople  in  general  were  not  such  conservatives 
as  these  seafaring  men,  for  the  dismissal  of  Harper 
after  the  hearing  at  Faneuil  Hall,  where  it  was  argued 
that  the  warrant  for  his  arrest  was  illegal,  called  forth 
enthusiastic  applause.  Stoutly  arrayed  with  Hancock 
against  the  repeal  of  the  law  was  Samuel  Adams,  who 
"  thanked  God,"  when  Harrison  Gray  Otis  took  the 
same  side  of  the  controversy,  "  that  there  was  one 
young  man  willing  to  step  forth  in  the  good  old  cause 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY 


^3S 


of  morality  and  religion."  Here,  however,  was  a 
conservative  cause  which  was  doomed.  Through  the 
governorship  of  Adams,  following  Hancock's  death  in 
1793,  the  players  had  much  to  contend  with.  Yet  it 
was  in  1794  that  the  first  true  theatre  in  Boston,  built 


The  Federal  Street  Theatre,  Corner  of  Federal  and  Franklin 

STREETS. 

on  Federal  Street  from  a  classic  design  by  Bulfinch, 
was  opened ;  and  by  degrees  from  that  time  forth  the 
prohibitory  law  passed  through  the  stages  of  dead 
letter  to  repeal.  It  was  this  Federal  Street  Theatre 
in  its  early  days  which  followed  the  significant  prac- 
tice of  closing  its  doors  on  the  evening  of  the  regular 
week-day  service  in  the  Boston  churches.  It  may 
have  been  by  such  means  that  the  local  theatre  took 
the  first  steps  toward  winning  its  place  somewhat 
unusually  near  the  heart  of  the  people. 

But  changes  came,  and  have  always  come,  slowly  in 
Boston.  The  eighteenth  century  is  said  to  have  passed 
before  the  traces  of  the  siege  were  entirely  removed. 


136  BOSTON 

Meanwhile  the  energy  and  caution  characteristic  of  the 
people  were  building  a  sure  prosperity,  to  which  a 
dignified  local  atmosphere  gave  a  suitable  background. 
It  is  usual  to  look  for  this  dignity  in  the  higher  places, 
but  signs  of  a  sturdy  independence  pervading  all  classes 
of  society  are  not  wanting.  There  is  indeed  a  world 
of  suggestion  in  an  incident  related  by  William  Tudor 
in  his  shrewd  Letters  from  the  Eastern  States^  published 
in  1820:  "A  few  years  ago,  at  the  parade  of  the 
artillery  election,  which  takes  place  on  the  common  in 
Boston,  some  confusion  took  place  as  the  close  of  the 
procession  was  entering  the  ground  appropriated  to 
the  ceremony.  The  crowd  was  pressing  very  hard 
at  the  entrance,  and  the  bar  was  put  down  before  all 
the  representatives  had  got  in.  Some  of  these  called 
out  to  the  officer  who  had  charge  of  the  passage,  in  a 
tone  expressive  of  their  claim  to  admission,  IVe  are 
representatives  I  A  man  among  the  crowd  immediately 
vociferated,  in  the  same  tone.  We  are  the  people  them- 
selves I  "  The  joining  of  this  spirit  with  a  recognition 
of  authority  and  leadership  in  those  to  whom  they 
justly  belonged  augured  well  for  the  development  of 
the  town  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

In  the  more  prosperous  houses  the  formalities  of 
life  were  carefully  observed.  Dress,  furniture,  and  the 
table  received  their  full  share  of  attention,  —  though 
perhaps  not  that  more  abundant  share  which  character- 
ized cities  farther  to  the  south.  The  spreading  com- 
merce of  the  port  brought,  with  furnishings  and  usages 
from    foreign    ports,    a    healthy  modification  of  local 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  137 

habits.  It  savors  perhaps  quite  as  much  of  the  time 
as  of  the  place  to  find  that  in  a  representative  family 
at  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  children  were 
always  expected  to  use  the  words  "  honored  papa "  ^ 
and  "  honored  mamma  "  in  addressing  their  parents. 
There  is  a  strongly  local  tint,  however,  in  the  little 
picture  of  1806  and  thereabouts  which  Dr.  Hale  has 
recently  reproduced.  It  reveals  Colonel  Perkins, 
Harrison  Gray  Otis,  William  ("  Billy ")  Gray,  and 
other  leaders  of  commerce  and  affairs,  going  home 
from  their  offices  to  an  eight  o'clock  breakfast,  carry- 
ing on  their  arms  the  baskets  filled  at  the  Faneuil 
Hall  market  with  provisions  for  a  one  o'clock  dinner. 
The  informality  of  such  a  custom  finds  its  balance  in 
the  stately  notice  sent  near  the  end  of  the  old  century 
to  delinquent  tax-payers  :  "  The  Town  Treasurer  pre- 
sents his  most  respectful  compliments  to  those  citizens  , 
who  have  tax-bills  unpaid,  and  requests  the  favor  of 
them  to  pay  the  same  to  the  collectors  immediately,  as 
he  has  large  drafts  from  the  Selectmen  and  Overseers 
of  the  Poor  in  favor  of  mechanics,  schoolmasters,  and 
others,  to  whom,  especially  at  the  present  season, 
money  would  be  very  acceptable."  When  such 
urbanity  pervades  a  tax-bill,  we  may  suspect  that  it 
stands  for  something  in  the  life  of  the  town  to  which 
the  tax  is  due. 

An  academic  influence  so  near  and  pervasive  as  that 
of  Harvard  College  could  not  but  make  itself  felt  at 
all  stages  of  Boston  history.  In  the  years  just  before 
and  after  1800  there  were  important  outward  evidences 


138 


BOSTON 


of  this  influence.  It  was  a  valuable  and  surely  an 
academic  impulse  which  led  to  the  founding  of  the 
Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  incorporated  in  1794. 
To  express  the  consciousness  of  local  existence  is  for  a 
town  what  the  expression  of  one*s  individuality  is  to 
a  man.     In  its  proper  work  the  Historical  Society  has 


The  Tontine  Crescent,  Franklin  Street. 


certainly  exercised  this  function.  In  its  very  dwelling- 
places  it  has  typified  the  development  of  Boston. 
What  the  Fenway,  where  its  stately  building  now 
stands,  is  to  the  present  city,  Franklin  Street  and  the 
Tontine  Crescent  were  to  Boston  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  In  the  rooms  over  the  arch- 
way leading  into  Arch  Street  at  the  centre  of  the 
delightful  Crescent  which  the  art  of  Bulfinch  created 
for  too  short  an  existence,  the  Historical  Society  had 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  139 

its  headquarters  for  the  forty  years  before  1833,  when 
it  moved  to  the  rooms  in  the  granite  building  north 
of  the  King's  Chapel  burying-ground,  occupied  till  the 
century  was  nearly  ended.  There  is  an  abundance  of 
history  in  the  facts  of  local  geography. 

Early  in  the  new  century  came  the  Anthology  Club, 
long  extinct  yet  living  in  its  diverse  offspring,  the 
Boston  Athenaeum  and  the  North  American  Review. 
The  club  took  its  name  from  a  periodical,  the  Monthly 
Anthology^  a  Magazine  of  Polite  Literature,  which  after 
a  six  months'  career  under  its  founder  came  in  1804 
into  the  control  of  a  small  body  of  young  men,  locally 
prominent  in  the  ministry,  the  law,  medicine,  and 
scholarship.  The  little  club  met  once  a  week,  decided 
upon  manuscripts,  and  had  a  simple  supper  and 
informal  talk.  The  ten  volumes  which  it  issued  are 
described  by  the  historian  of  the  Boston  Athenaeum 
as  "  constituting  one  of  the  most  lasting  and  honorable 
monuments  of  the  taste  and  literature  of  the  period. 
Its  labors  may  be  considered  as  a  true  revival  of 
polite  learning  in  this  country,  after  that  decay  and 
neglect  which  resulted  from  the  distractions  of  the 
Revolutionary  War,  and  so  forming  an  epoch  in  the 
intellectual  history  of  the  United  States."  When  this 
Monthly  Anthology  expired,  its  place  was  taken,  after 
the  interval  of  a  few  years,  by  the  North  American 
Review  and  Miscellaneous  Journal,  edited  at  first  by 
one  of  the  Anthology  Club,  who  looked  to  his  former 
associates  as  his  chief  contributors.  Beginning  as  a 
bi-monthly,    the    North    American    soon    became    the 


I40  BOSTON 

quarterly  which,  for  a  large  portion  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  expressed  the  best  American  thought.  The 
"Old  North"  —  not  the  present  New  York  monthly 
—  was  as  truly  a  Boston  institution  as  the  Old  South 
itself. 

For  that  institution  which  has  never  departed  from 
Boston,  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  the  Anthology  Club 
was  also  responsible.  The  club,  we  are  informed,  was 
not  more  than  twenty  days  old  when  it  passed  a  vote 
to  form  a  library.  From  this  beginning  the  Atlienasum, 
incorporated  February  13,  1807,  took  its  being.  The 
modern  public  library  was  then  a  thing  far  in  the 
future.  A  public  museum  of  fine  arts  was  even  more 
remote.  Because  the  Athenaeum  was  a  private  institu- 
tion it  did  not  fail  to  render  a  public  service  both  with 
books  and  with  pictures  and  sculpture.  In  a  less 
obvious  way  it  has  exerted  another  strong  influence  — 
as  a  minister  to  public  spirit.  In  the  mere  provoca- 
tion to  giving,  an  institution  does  good.  In  1822  we 
find  Mr.  James  Perkins  giving  the  Athenaeum  his 
mansion  in  Pearl  Street,  where  it  remained  till  the 
Beacon  Street  library  was  built  in  1849.  ^^^  purchase 
of  the  Stuart  portraits  of  George  and  Martha  Washing- 
ton in  1 83 1,  and  of  a  goodly  portion  of  Washington's 
library,  through  private  subscription,  in  1 849,  definitely 
enriched  the  city.  In  1846  came  the  endowment  by 
John  Bromfield  of  a  perpetually  increasing  fund,  begin- 
ning with  $75,000  for  the  purchase  of  books.  In  these 
days  of  scattered  millions  the  amount  of  the  gift  seems 
hardly  worth  stopping  to  record.     But  the  man  of  the 


FROM  TOWN    TO    CITY  141 

first  half  of  the  century  who  felt  the  impulse  to  do 
something  permanently  useful  for  his  city,  and  to  do 
it  not  by  will  but  during  his  own  lifetime,  was  some- 
thing of  a  pioneer.  One  likes  him  none  the  less  for 
the  honest  record  that,  after  first  planning  to  remain 
an  unknown  giver,  he  reflected  "  how  almost  impossible 
it  was  in  an  inquisitive  and  intelligent  community  to 
keep  such  a  secret  long  and  perfectly ;  and,  also  it 
seemed  to  him  a  species  of  hypocrisy  to  pretend  to 
hide  what  it  was,  in  a  manner,  certain  that  time  would 
ultimately  and  perhaps  speedily  reveal." 

But  public  spirit  is  shown  in  other  ways  than  in 
making  acknowledged  gifts  of  money.  Cotton  Mather 
and  Dr.  Zabdiel  Boylston  showed  it  near  the  begin- 
ning of  the  earlier  century  in  subjecting  their  own 
sons  to  the  danger  of  inoculation.  In  1802  the  effi- 
cacy of  vaccination,  as  practised  by  Jenner  in  England, 
and  by  his  follower.  Dr.  Benjamin  Waterhouse,  in 
Cambridge  and  Boston,  was  still  to  be  tested.  Dr. 
Waterhouse  had  no  fear  of  trying  it  in  his  own  family, 
where  he  vaccinated  four  of  the  children  and  three 
servants  with  excellent  results.  It  was  another  thing 
for  laymen  to  offer  their  children  to  the  same  cause. 
Yet  this  is  what  some  of  the  selectmen  and  citizens 
of  good  standing  did  with  nineteen  of  their  boys 
between  eight  and  fifteen  years  of  age.  In  the  sum- 
mer of  1802  this  company  of  boys,  with  an  experi- 
enced nurse,  went  over  to  an  old  barracks  on  Noddle's 
island  (East  Boston),  and  having  been  vaccinated  were 
submitted    to   every   exposure,   even    sleeping   in  the 


I4l 


BOSTON 


The  Athen^um,  Beacon  Street. 

same  room  with  patients  who  had  contracted  small- 
pox both  in  the  usual  way  and  through  inoculation. 
The  entire  success  of  the  experiment,  apart  from  its 
value  as  a  striking  example  of  public  spirit,  did  much 
to  diminish  the  fear  and  the  danger  of  smallpox  in 
Boston. 

These  instances  of  the  private  sense  of  public  re- 
sponsibility and  of  the  effects  of  a  pervading  academic 


FROM    TOWN   TO    CITY  143 

influence  are  perhaps  no  more  typical  of  the  place  than 
a  native  quality  which  may  draw  its  illustration  from 
the  same  period  of  local  history.  This  is  the  quality 
of  caution.  In  the  Letters  from  the  Eastern  States 
already  cited  an  "  eminent  individual "  tells  the  fol- 
lowing anecdote  of  himself:  "Talking  one  day  with 
his  superior  officer,  the  passionate,  impetuous  General 
Charles  Lee,  the  latter  exclaimed,  '  Why  the  devil  do 
you  stare  at  me  with  your  mouth  open  ;  why  don't 
you  reply  quicker },  —  I   say  everything  offhand  that 

comes  into  my  head,  and  by  G I  am  ashamed  of 

my  own  questions  long  before  I  get  your  answer.' 
He  explained  to  him  (slowly,  however)  that  the  habit 
was  inveterate ;  that  he  supposed  it  grew  out  of  the 
situation  in  which  the  Puritans  were  placed ;  they 
were  persecuted,  and  obliged  to  be  very  cautious  with 
answers  they  gave,  to  avoid  difficulties  ;  and  that,  with 
many  of  their  habits,  had  been  handed  down,  and  be- 
come a  part  of  our  education."  The  lineal  descendants 
of  those  who  "were  persecuted,  and  obliged  to  be 
very  cautious  "  have  not  yet  vanished  from  the  earth. 
The  writer  from  whom  the  words  are  borrowed  refrains 
from  pointing  a  moral  in  the  fate  of  the  headlong  Lee. 
He  does  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  the  inexpressive 
New  Englander  rises  to  emergencies  with  action  the 
most  effective. 

The  various  characteristics  which  have  been  sug- 
gested are  eminently  those  of  conservatism.  Because 
the  Boston  community  was  intensely  conservative,  the 
town  stood  just  where  it  did  in  the  political  differences 


144  BOSTON 

of  the  young  republic.  It  was  the  part  of  conserva- 
tism to  give  the  right  to  govern  the  new  state  to  those 
who  had  done  most  to  create  it,  namely  to  Hancock 
and  Adams.  After  the  death  of  Hancock  in  1793, 
Adams  held  the  chief  rnagistracy  until  1797.  One  of 
his  contemporaries  made  a  good-natured  remark  which 
has  been  frequently  repeated  :  "  Samuel  Adams  would 
have  the  State  of  Massachusetts  govern  the  Union, 
the  town  of  Boston  govern  Massachusetts,  and  that  he 
should  govern  the  town  of  Boston,  and  then  the  whole 
would  not  be  intentionally  ill-governed."  But  even 
before  his  rule  came  to  an  end,  the  reaction  against  the 
"  republican"  principles  for  which  he  stood  had  begun. 
The  Federalist  principles  which  were  soon  to  prevail 
belonged  rather  to  a  period  of  building  up  than  to 
that  of  tearing  down  in  which  Adams's  most  telling 
work  had  been  done.  Perhaps  nothing  suggests  the 
change  of  sentiment  more  clearly  than  the  attitude  of 
Boston  toward  the  French  Revolution,  at  its  begin- 
ning and  its  end.  The  change  was  typical  of  that 
larger  conservatism  which  gave  the  Federalist  party  its 
long  preeminence  in  Boston. 

The  first  news  of  the  uprising  in  Paris  was  hailed  as 
an  evidence  that  our  good  friends  were  following  in 
the  fortunate  path  toward  that  political  freedom  which 
America  had  secured.  Even  as  late  as  January  of 
1793  the  enthusiasm  found  expression  in  an  open-air 
banquet.  A  roasted  ox  weighing  a  thousand  pounds, 
with  gilded  horns,  raised  upon  a  car  twenty  feet  high, 
was  drawn  by  fifteen  horses  through  the  town  as  "  a 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY 


45 


peace  offering  to  Liberty  and  Equality."  The  table 
spread  for  the  feast  in  State  Street  reached  from  the 
Old  State  House  to  Kilby  Street.  From  the  balconies 
of  the  neighboring  houses  many  women  looked  down 
upon  the  scene.  In  theory  it  was  beautiful.  In  prac- 
tice it  ended  in  somewhat  the  same  manner  as  the 
Revolution  it  was  celebrating ;  at  least  portions  of  the 
ox  are  said  to  have  been  thrown  into  the  air,  and  even 
the  balconies  became  coigns  of  doubtful  vantage.  The 
laws  of  week-day  temperance  were  not  always  so  care- 
fully observed  as  those  of  Sabbath-keeping. 

All  this  happened  two  days  after  the  execution  of 
Louis  XVI.  In  due  time  the  news  reached  Boston. 
It  was  what  the  more  conservative  had  been  fearing, 
and  only  strengthened  their  belief  that  the  people  could 
not  be  trusted  too  far.  This  was  a  chief  article  of 
Federalist  faith.  The  party  which  held  it  naturally 
came  to  be  known  as  the  "English"  as  opposed  to 
the  "French"  party,  —  the  anti-Federalists,  called 
first  Republicans,  then,  and  in  later  incarnations. 
Democrats. 

The  sources  of  strength  for  the  Federalist  party  in 
Boston  were  obvious.  They  have  been  well  enumer- 
ated as  "  the  clergy,  shocked  at  the  increasing  infidelity 
in  France,  capitalists  alarmed  at  the  disregard  of  the 
rights  of  property,  merchants  interested  to  conciliate 
England  as  the  mistress  of  the  seas,  and  loyalists,  still 
cherishing  a  filial  love  for  the  land  of  their  fathers.^:' 
It  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether  this  final  cla^ 
exerted   any  strong  influence.     Regarding  the  others 


146  BOSTON 

there  can  be  no  doubt.  Numerically  surpassed  per- 
haps by  those  who  greeted  the  French  Revolution  with 
the  warmest  sympathy,  they  were  the  classes  which 
clearly  saw  their  interest  in  stability  of  every  sort ;  and 
since  their  interest  was  in  large  measure  that  of  the 
community,  their  political  views  could  hardly  have 
failed  to  gain  and  hold  important  ground.  The  gov- 
ernorship of  the  state  may  fairly  be  taken  to  repre- 
sent the  prevailing  sentiment.  Immediately  following 
the  fifteen  Republican  terms  of  Hancock  and  Adams, 
the  supremacy  was  divided  in  the  ratio  of  twenty- 
one  Federalist  terms  of  office  against  eight  for  their 
opponents. 

In  spite  of  this  unequal  division  of  power  there  was 
a  rivalry  between  the  two  parties  so  keen  and  constant 
as  to  breed  the  bitterest  political  feeling.  We  read  of 
two  intimate  friends  belonging  to  the  opposite  parties 
quarrelling  so  violently  over  the  election  of  the  Re- 
publican candidate,  James  Sullivan,  to  the  governor- 
ship in  1807,  that  their  intercourse  ceased  entirely  for 
forty  years,  when  the  Federalist  lay  dying,  and  his  old 
Republican  friend  and  enemy  travelled  from  far  to 
bid  him  a  peaceful  farewell.  The  Embargo  of  1807 
and  the  approach  of  the  War  of  18 12  only  intensified 
the  divisions.  In  181 1  a  Boston  lady  wrote  to  her 
brother  in  England :  "  The  anniversary  of  American 
Independence  has  been  lately  celebrated  with  great 
splendor  by  both  parties,  for  unhappily  we  are  much 
divided,  long  processions  and  military  escorts  display- 
ing the  extent  of  both.'*     Another  Boston  lady  \vrote 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  147 

to  her  Federalist  husband  in  Washington  two  months 
before  war  was  declared  in  18 12:  "Both  the  clergy- 
men I  heard  yesterday  preached  very  orthodox  doc- 
trine, according  to  your  opinion.  Mr.  Channing's 
subject  was  the  baneful  effect  of  party  spirit.  In  the 
treatment  of  it,  he  gave  much  offence  to  some  high- 
toned  partisans."  With  poUtics  affecting  both  the 
pulpit  and  the  Fourth  of  July  celebration,  there  were 
sure  to  be  results  in  private  life  even  more  tragic  than 
the  estrangement  of  friends. 

The  private  tragedy  of  the  Federalist  period  in  Bos- 
ton was  the  killing  in  1 806  of  the  son  of  a  distinguished 
Republican  lawyer,  Benjamin  Austin,  by  Thomas  O. 
Selfridge,  a  Federalist  lawyer  of  professional  and  social 
prominence.  The  two  men  had  quarrelled  over  a 
matter  so  trivial  that  only  politics  could  account  for 
the  bitterness  aroused.  Selfridge  called  Austin  in 
print  "  a  coward,  liar  and  scoundrel."  Austin's  son, 
Charles,  just  about  to  graduate  creditably  at  Harvard, 
took  it  upon  himself  one  day  to  avenge  the  insult. 
He  attacked  Selfridge  on  the  sidewalk  in  State  Street 
at  the  hour  of  the  day  when  his  deed  would  be  most 
open.  Selfridge  drew  a  pistol,  and  fired  the  bullet 
from  the  effects  of  which  young  Austin  immediately 
died  in  a  shop  near  by.  In  the  trial  which  soon 
followed,  political  feeling  naturally  played  a  prominent 
part.  Republican  lawyers,  of  whom  Attorney-General 
Sullivan  was  one,  argued  against  Selfridge,  who  was 
^defended  by  Harrison  Gray  Otis  and  others  from  the 
front  ranks  of   Federalism.     Selfridge   was   convicted 


148  BOSTON 

merely  of  manslaughter.  On  the  charge  of  murder  he 
was  judged  "  Not  guilty."  Whatever  the  eloquence 
of  the  lawyers,  or  the  sympathies  of  the  jurors,  the  ver- 
dict and  the  true  merits  of  the  case  seem  to  have  stood 
together. 

There  was  another  occasion,  a  few  years  earlier, 
when  poHtics  were  pleasantly  forgotten  for  a  moment. 
Caleb  Strong,  Federalist  candidate  for  governor,  was 
elected  in  1800.  On  a  day  soon  after  this  event  a  pub- 
lic procession  of  which  he  was  a  part  marched  through 
Winter  Street,  past  the  house  of  Samuel  Adams,  the 
venerable  leader  of  the  defeated  party.  At  Mr. 
Strong's  order  the  procession  halted.  With  bared 
head  he  stepped  aside  from  it,  and  shook  the  hand  of 
the  ancient  champion  of  popular  liberty.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  in  this  our  last  glimpse  of  Samuel  Adams, 
who  died  three  years  later,  his  political  opponents  are 
seen  doing  him  reverence. 

The  year  after  the  death  of  Samuel  Adams,  Alexan- 
der Hamilton  fell  in  his  duel  with  Aaron  Burr.  In 
other  parts  of  the  country  Federalism  did  not  long 
survive  this  loss.  But  in  Boston,  as  we  have  seen, 
there  were  causes  deeper  than  adherence  to  any  indi- 
viduals for  constancy  to  Federalist  principles ;  and 
soon  the  fruits  of  Jefferson's  Embargo  of  1807 
ripened  into  effects  which  held  the  community  in 
opposition  to  RepubHcanism.  In  passing  the  Embargo 
Act  the  authorities  were  less  concerned  with  the  inter- 
ests of  New  England  than  with  the  hope  of  injuring 
England.     An  act  which  crippled  the  commerce  of  all 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  149 

the  states,  wrought  of  course  its  greatest  hardships 
in  Massachusetts,  where,  before  the  passage  of  the 
Embargo,  about  one-third  of  all  the  shipping  in  the 
country  was  owned.  When  the  Act  became  a  law  this 
shipping  must  needs  rot  at  the  wharves.  Owners  and 
sailors  were  alike  the  sufferers.  One  January  day  a 
crowd  of  from  eighty  to  a  hundred  seamen  marched 
with  a  half-masted  flag  to  Governor  Sullivan's  house, 
and  made  their  plea  for  either  work  or  bread.  A  tact- 
ful speech  from  the  Governor  chanced  to  send  them 
away  good-natured.  Both  in  Boston  and  in  other 
New  England  seaports  public  soup-kitchens  were 
opened  for  the  many  who  needed  them.  But  none 
of  these  were  things  to  breed  content.  Indeed,  there 
were  even  whispers  of  secession  in  the  air.  Between 
the  repeal  of  the  Embargo  in  1808,  and  Madison's 
declaration  of  war  with  England  in  18 12,  little  or 
nothing  was  done  to  render  New  England  any  better 
satisfied  with  the  course  of  national  affairs.  In  the 
nature  of  things  war  could  not  be  popular  in  Boston, 
nor  could  the  national  government  be  expected  to  do 
much  for  the  place  which  had  so  bitterly  opposed  it. 
Commodore  Bainbridge,  commanding  the  Charlestown 
Navy  Yard,  had  to  deal  with  a  committee  of  civilians 
demanding  the  removal  of  the  Constitution  and  the 
newly  launched  Independence  to  a  point  in  the  harbor 
below  the  fort,  where  a  possible  attack  from  British 
ships  would  not  bring  destruction  upon  the  town. 
He  gave  them  his  frank  opinion  of  citizens  who 
would   let  their  disapproval   of  an    administration    so 


I50  BOSTON 

blind  them  to  the  interests  of  the  nation  at  large, 
and  kept  the  ships  where  they  were.  Of  their  own 
motion  the  people  of  Boston  put  their  old  forts  in 
order,  and  built  a  new  one.  Fort  Strong,  on  Noddle's 
Island.  Before  the  war  was  ended,  Boston  was 
represented  at  the  Hartford  Convention  by  a  little 
group  of  its  leading  men  who  lent  their  voices  to 
such  expressions  of  states' -rights  as  fifty  years  later 
their  grandsons  counted  treason.  Fortunately  the 
end  of  the  war  removed  many  of  the  causes  of  Fed- 
eralist complaint,  and  in  the  "  era  of  good  feeling  '* 
which  immediately  followed,  political  animosities  faded 
away. 

Even  with  its  commerce  paralyzed,  Boston  was  not 
permitted  to  forget  its  importance  as  a  seaport.  Ships 
of  war  and  privateers  came  and  went  as  they  could. 
The  Constitution,  launched  in  1797  from  the  shipyard 
where  "  Constitution  Wharf"  now  stands,  was,  as  we 
are  soon  to  see,  peculiarly  a  Boston  vessel.  Into 
Boston  harbor  Commodore  Hull  sailed  her  after  his 
escape  from  the  British  squadron  in  the  summer  of 
1 8 12.  To  Boston  again  she  came  after  the  Guerriere 
fight  a  few  weeks  later  ;  and  when  she  returned  again 
under  Bainbridge,  the  Java  had  struck  to  her,  off  the 
Brazihan  coast.  Over  this  victory  there  were  public 
rejoicings  worthy  of  a  town  in  closer  sympathy  with 
the  war.  Still  later  —  on  June  i,  1813  —  the  hills  and 
housetops  of  Boston  were  crowded  with  people  watch- 
ing the  Chesapeake  as  she  sailed  down  the  harbor  and 
joined  in  that  disastrous  conflict  with  the  Shannon,  of 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY 


KI 


which  the  distant  smoke  and  sounds  were  not  beyond 
sight  and  hearing. 

To  the  very  crippHng  of  the  merchant  marine,  how- 
ever, Boston  owed  a  new  phase  of  its  development  — 
the  rapid  growth  of  manufactures  in  the  first  and  second 
decades  of  the  century.     The  capital  and  energy  which 


^5^^# 


Removing  Beacon  Hill. 
After  a  Drawing  made  in  1811,  by  J.  R.  Smith. 

commerce  had  engaged  could  not  lie  inactive,  and  here 
was  their  natural  outlet.  It  was  a  fortunate  circum- 
stance also  that  in  1803  the  Middlesex  Canal,  begun 
in  1794,  was  opened  for  traffic.  Thus  the  merchandise 
of  Boston  and  the  products  of  the  valley  of  the 
Merrimac,  with  which  the  canal  joined  itself  at  East 
Chelmsford,  now  Lowell,  could  be  freely  exchanged. 
Twenty-seven  mile^  in    length,    navigated    In    twelve 


152  BOSTON 

hours  by  boats  of  twenty-four  tons,  the  canal,  a  triumph 
of  its  day,  dwindles  to  small  proportions  in  the  per- 
spective of  a  century.  There  is  even  a  pathos  in  the 
trick  by  which  fame  has  given  permanence  to  the  name 
of  the  engineer,  Loammi  Baldwin,  who  built  the  for- 
gotten waterway.  It  is  not  for  this  service  that  he  is 
remembered,  but  because  while  making  his  survey  for 
the  canal,  he  or  one  of  his  associates  chanced  by  the 
edge  of  a  wood  upon  an  old  tree,  much  damaged  by 
wood-peckers,  but  bearing  a  few  bright  red  apples. 
They  were  tasted,  and  the  flavor  was  so  agreeable  that 
scions  ,were  cut,  and  from  these  the  whole  succeeding 
race  of  Baldwin  apples  has  sprung. 

In  all  these  years  of  transition  from  town  to  city, 
Boston  had  been  growing  rapidly.  The  bridges  to 
Charlestown  and  Cambridge,  opened  respectively  in 
1786  and  1793,  had  th^  virtual  effect  of  widening  the 
town  boundaries.  With  the  nineteenth  century  be- 
gan the  changes  in  the  outline  of  ancient  Boston  which 
left  it  a  peninsula  no  longer.  In  181 1  one  of  the  Bos- 
ton ladies  already  quoted  wrote,  "  Old  Beacon  hill  is 
taking  down  to  fill  up  the  mill  pond,"  and,  with  due 
horror  at  the  removal  of  the  everlasting  hill  to  which 
her  eyes  had  looked  up,  she  complained  that  the 
Hancock  heirs  in  selHng  their  land  for  such  a  purpose 
"  have  preferred  interest  to  elegance,  not  a  very  new 
thing."  It  was  in  this  change  that  Bulfinch's  Beacon 
monument,  recently  restored  in  part  to  the  State  House 
grounds,  was  displaced  from  its  commanding  position 
on  the  site  of  the  old  beacon,  higher  than  the  State 


FROM    TOWN    TO    CITY  153 

House  itself.  A  more  important  aspect  of  the  change 
—  which  took  twenty-five  years  for  its  full  accomplish- 
ment—  was  that  the  filling  in  of  the  Mill  Pond  added 
about  seventy  acres  to  the  north  end  of  the  town.  The 
traveller  arriving  at  the  North  Station  does  not  realize 
that  he  may  be  alighting  on  portions  of  Beacon,  Copp's 
and  Pemberton  hills  ;  but  from  one  or  all  of  these 
eminences  came  the  land  on  which  the  station  stands. 

On  the  opposite  side  of  the  town,  meanwhile,  growth 
of  a  less  artificial  sort  had  been  going  forward.  A  land 
speculation  on  Dorchester  Neck  (now  South  Boston) 
was  behind  the  movement  resulting  in  a  bill  of  the 
General  Court  which  in  1804  took  this  territory  away 
from  the  reluctant  Dorchester  and  added  it  to  Boston. 
The  expected  influx  of  population  did  not  follow  the 
opening  of  the  first  South  Boston  bridge  at  Dover 
Street  in  1805.  All  efforts  to  build  a  second  bridge 
were  fruitless  for  twenty  years.  At  one  period  in  the 
quarrel  between  the  rival  factions,  a  boisterous  crowd 
disguised  as  Indians  —  unworthy  children  perhaps  of 
the  Tea  Party  "  Mohawks  "  —  floated  away  the  struc- 
ture over  which  communication  had  actually  been  es- 
tablished. It  was  not  till  after  Boston  became  a  city 
that  the  second  bridge  was  finally  built,  and  the  growth 
of  South  Boston  began. 

Even  more  rapid  than  the  territorial  growth  through 
these  years  of  transition  was  the  increase  of  population. 
In  round  numbers  the  decennial  gains  were  from 
18,000  in  1790  to  24,000  in  1800,  to  33,000  in  18 to, 
to  43,000  in   1820.     Long  before  this  highest  figure 


154 


BOSTON 


was  reached  it  became  clear  that  the  old  and  jealously 
guarded  form  of  government  by  town-meetings  was 
impracticable.  The  unwieldy  number  of  voters,  the 
waste  and  failure  of  power  at  many  points  of  making 
and  administering  the  local  laws,  a  score  of  considera- 


HousE  OF  John  Phillips,  Birthplace  of  Wendell  Phillips; 
Corner  of  Beacon  and  Walnut  streets. 

tions,  made  some  change  imperative.  Yet  it  was  not 
an  easy  thing  to  bring  about.  As  early  as  1784-5 
a  plan  to  effect  the  change  was  presented.  Again  in 
1 79 1,  in  1804,  i^  1 815,  the  matter  was  discussed, — 
not  always  in  the  light  of  a  forthright  adoption  of  city 
government.     One  of  these  compromise    plans   pro- 


FROM    TOWN   TO    CITY  155 

posed  incorporation  under  the  hybrid  title  of  "  the 
Intendant  and  MunicipaHty  of  the  Town  and  City  of 
Boston."  It  was  in  1822  that  an  organization  of  mayor, 
aldermen,  and  council  was  adopted  —  not  without  a 
struggle.  To  choose  a  first  mayor  was  almost  as  diffi- 
cult. Harrison  Gray  Otis  and  Josiah  Quincy,  Fed- 
eralists both,  were  the  leading  candidates,  and  received 
so  nearly  the  same  number  of  votes  that  both  with- 
drew. Thereupon  John  Phillips  was  readily  elected 
for  a  single  term. 

The  names  of  these  three  candidates  mean  much  or 
little,  according  to  one's  knowledge  of  local  conditions. 
If  those  with  the  fuller  knowledge  require  further  evi- 
dence that  the  real  leaders  of  the  place,  not  in  pohtics 
alone,  were  the  men  who  sought  political  office,  a  list 
of  the  aldermen  and  council  for  the  early  years  of 
city  government  will  present  a  surprising  abundance 
of  names  then  and  still  associated  with  the  best  inter- 
ests of  Boston  life.  The  new  city  wisely  carried  on 
the  traditions  of  the  ancient  town.  Or  shall  we  say 
that  the  influence  of  the  town-meeting  in  keeping  the 
true  leaders  at  the  head  of  local  affairs  was  too  strong 
to  be  overcome  except  by  slow  degrees  ? 


VI 


THE    HUB    AND    THE    WHEEL 


K 


EEPING  the  theme  of  Place 
and  People  steadily  in  view, 
we  have  not  yet  let  the  inhabitants 
of  Boston  lead  us  far  awayfrom  her 
three  hills.  But  Emerson  was  more 
than  a  maker  of  pleasant  phrases 
when  he  wrote  of  his  birthplace  :  — 

**  Each  street  leads  downward  to  the  sea 
Or  landward  to  the  west." 

Down  these  streets,  then,  and  out  into  the  widest 
world,  some  of  the  people  must  surely  be  followed,  if 
the  place  is  truly  to  be  understood.  No  apology  is 
needed  —  now  or  later  —  for  departing  for  a  time  from 
the  strict  sequence  of  events  to  look  separately  at  special 
phases  of  the  life  which  has  made  both  place  and  peo- 
ple precisely  what  they  have  been.  Perhaps  the  fore- 
most of  these  phases  is  that  in  which  the  central  figures 
are  the  men  who,  in  their  successive  generations,  have 
gone  out  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  carrying  the  local 
spirit  abroad,  and  enriching  the  native  town  and  city 
by  all  they  have  brought  back. 

Followers  of  the  sea  more  than  the  people  of  any 
other  place  in  America  before  the  Revolution,  the  men 
of  Boston  could  not  but  return,  in  the  general  restoring 

156 


\xJ  his  ./iarhotir  of  I^gflor,  ivilh  .t.-'u;icli>igs  wihhonl  i(  ccmi/ui 
in  are  !nidc/c/ri7  -as  laj^en  l_i/  Caplain  ."John  ^/oL/r ii'cHiir  Cnpl. 
^\\^^mix!,  Jmitli,  Qap\'\'^ni!iky .  4nniUw'    Capl  ".^a.rfph Tlciriclqe. 

L-r.c'i  .j'Vli\munA  AnJr^stfGuj;h}  Cuplaui  §fneiraU  (/'n^a-ncat/n 
'Mr/pflrv  J'i/lajejliej  t^ryi ley  Sf  ir: m t.-t l\fn  .y: / ^'v^:yr^a ^uUtz. 
irtca-      ^oiith  a„dhj/Zaflmrfn  r.i^d.i-S'ujh  -ua/c.- fi^fL.iX ri-Ji 
fjprin0  '.fides  tijool  H  ^rfaal  n yi hides  at^ojicii. . 


Earliest  Chart  of  Boston  Harbor,  1688-9. 
In  possession  of  Boston  Public  Library. 


158  BOSTON 

of  normal  conditions,  to  their  interest  in  maritime 
affairs.  How  could  it  be  otherwise?  At  their  very 
feet  lay  the  inviting  bay,  with  its  best  of  harbors,  safe 
from  the  sea  of  which  it  is  less  an  arm  than  a  shoulder. 
At  their  very  doors  lay  all  the  materials  for  ship-build- 
ing. How  entirely  the  Constitution,  finished  in  1797, 
was  a  home-made  vessel,  and  therein  a  typical  product, 
Mr.  H.  A.  Hill  has  pointed  out  in  his  monograph  on 
Boston  commerce  :  "  Paul  Revere  furnished  the  copper, 
bolts  and  spikes,  drawn  from  malleable  copper  by  a 
process  then  new ;  and  Ephraim  Thayer,  who  had  a 
shop  at  the  South  End,  made  the  gun-carriages  for 
the  frigate.  Her  sails  were  made  in  the  Granary 
building  at  the  corner  of  Park  and  Tremont  streets ; 
no  other  building  in  Boston  was  large  enough  for  the 
purpose.  There  were  then  fourteen  rope-walks  in 
Boston,  so  that  there  could  be  no  difficulty  in  obtain- 
ing cordage;  and  there  was  an  incorporated  company 
for  the  manufacture  of  sail-cloth,  whose  factory  was  on 
the  corner  of  Tremont  and  Boylston  streets,  and  which 
was  encouraged  by  a  bounty  on  its  product  from  the 
General  Court ;  this  product  had  increased  to  eighty 
or  ninety  thousand  yards  per  annum,  and  is  said  to 
have  competed  successfully  with  the  duck  brought 
from  abroad.  The  anchors  came  from  Hanover  in 
Plymouth  county,  and  a  portion  of  the  timber  used 
in  what  was  then  looked  upon  as  a  mammoth  vessel 
was  taken  from  the  woods  of  Allentown,  on  the 
borders  of  the  Merrimac,  fifty  miles  away."  Surely 
the  provocation  to  seafaring  was  sufficiently  strong. 


,l:/s  viCTf)RYr, 

OR,  HUZZA  FQurm   . 

GON:ST!TtJ-X-I.ON^ 


^^'     *  iC  ij^B  sont-pf  S<»d«js,  «!««- ear  ta  Biy  ssRgj 

&   -^  Jj^«MJi  bofeJ1i<»rtr4  hero  bo-*  &l  UJ>  ftir  gjius,  ' 
^»t.-^^  OBJ  f«Ofite  ««»l«Bcni  rag.i4tj-  pftSi.     -  -     -     - 

^^    •  <T>.«S-t;j.  nian*,  .     ^-     '    »^    ' 

h  ■    ^^s^Ha  -fiftc  s^rfe^la^  breeze,  <«m:  s^iJs iJey  -wcfe  beot, 

p.^  <i^tt3  «ii&  !«ft<t>  f«fl  »r  Joy  t»t%e  <>4»»  -*«  »<Bt, 

lit*  '  '•!«  tte  f,*«*'4Ca«»t«t«»»on  3  tangitt  »(rf  *<aBacli  boat, 

f  "-      A-(*»tT  tsai^fS  on  4be  wa(er  afloat 

I     ^  "    Wak  pat  fej-art  aaJjIc Ca;-t«!H  «e  pfo^'d  tfi«  de^p  laalo, 

|-,        ,^**  *tA<a  fa;  caasSBindij  ■»«  arc  r.  a<3y  sgam. 

K-.  ^  Ob  Ae  t««><*?ti  <rf  As«;us<,  a  sail  we  epleS, 

g.^     SVe  bo»e  {^4>  **i^  ««JB  wfi  eaasa  ap'aKaig  etde  j     . 

§Tlie  <Jf o«  ttt^  to  <j5t«rtet£^  t<t  <}»art«fs  -*«  ran, 
.    _ABi«Faeb-t^6ia^«lj-3worelo,£taiKif^e?r«*gar^      ' 

£  NiJw  bi^  asa  batyrst  of  g!ory  t<jgai<iV 

I  We  rerufs'iJ-'tm  iK-  SttoinikSet  <»  the  wort, 

g--  Kach  ftea-t  «»!  otid2Batr3,>ai>4«>s©«a.kaewfcar, 

I    _  And  w«  cjr>4  oot  i  vosp  foi  tjis  saftejf  Ga«rtfe«. 
•  Witb  flar  jiobls  tommaniTer  -we  fooghl  00  i*e  naio, 

J-  Asu  «c'j!  .oaqncr  wtia^isi  »bc&  fa  bids  os  agaia. 

^"      The  >-»}is  na«  fitw  tii^c!.,  sfl^  gaite  winn  *as  tjjc  jjlay, 

Thejr  |jva?fs  eb-I  tiwir  ri^gijjg  waj  socs  fiiot  avay,   ••    '- 
t        We  iimMet'd  th«f  tui!  «-itb  alf  |)0»sii)J?  «p««<t, 
;        "liV  ttk  &ar  good  iipuak^  ba^t-itog*,  of.  trttfeTiSS W  1w<84 
S    *        *T»a5"''i<»  »*tfeiisj'capt»'«  vpe /ought  on  tbemaio^    ' 
Vfiih  him  &  jisb  &&r«rsi-of  gftay  (<■  ^ais. 


That  •tiaibrsUog«eo\'r»'tetiJv«^  tl«»»g1it  ***i!^&-^ 


#*m 


W^od  ftiSttJ  ll)«-  «>»«» 


J'  Jseftjjpcr*  1^1 


fast. 


fc- 


Ait  -hopes  of  «3ijdtt.ijg  «s  BBS?  »ei>e  ^aSse  |ass : 


'Piie  Brif «»s.  ^  *eS«b»>-|K|?ps  Ml^^^ -ttM;  BJtc, 

For  *«  T*kfi  W.w^eleaaj  &aa/'i  no  cotarw  t«  ■«!  riks  ; 

So  a  gan  oa  &eir  foe  tfc«f  wsf  e  forCi  l»  let  &f,  . 

'  Cwa*  tinii  with  ««T«a^«l»i  ir«  fij»|^t  tm  tfee  testis,      ^^ 
And  we're  »ad?  br*»e  ^ojSy  i»  Sgftt  ijUfeltfln  agifa»  ^^ 

In  IseKfy.ftyB  iBissrtes^  ihe  basiaess  W4«  (Jyn<"y  --^ 

For  tttey  dtdn't  (jhifc  rriisb  such  fnie  Yankee  f»a  f.  _  - 
Sat  «e  kiatlly  r-eceiT'd-'tW  ott  board  ojjr  good  iMjij  ^  ,  , 
.M*oy  cursmg  tb64aj,»*cR  ih^y  toofc  their  last  wig. 

With  OBJ-  !rrat«  n<ibk  raij»<««i»  .*«•«  still  jjiewifc^an^tft.  _,., 
VFo-'tf  ft|bt  aad  ws'S  coiKjttcr  ftg?i8  asrf  SgiJoU-      "•    •' "    ^ 

Now  lioBJ«W6t<i  w«'rs  t>ooB^»  wjjh  a  fkf&ong  btecsa^    ,  _^    * 
As  fuf!  of  good  hoiKor  itnd  afittfe  as  you  jiteiae,         -      ~  - 
Kach-tta«-he«'rifds»»k>T  p»r(akfi$of  (heg!i»i,    , 
AtJd  dmks  »i«  fe*alrB  to  ta<  fafOrUe  t»s», 

Wjta  kjw  ffi!  the  te«fi«l!(  of  gt«f^«&f^a._v     '  . ' '" 


N>^  »8rcc»»  tort-?  goad  Cos*iH!ili(J»».»  feoat 
Which  itet  fetew  »iil  tMeai  wiilea  pfaol:  is  afioa{^ 
."Wio  aettf  w«S  aincti,  «r'iii  (ftt»y  e'er  rag. 
But  wit!  8<!-ck  to  th«'l*Jt  by  the  Amerifsffi  gig,  -    , 

Sotm*  10  oar  colors  «v'll  tvijf  r«D>sni, 
•     Aud  we'H  csn^utfT  for  fieeiiim  »g»ia  arf  a|»«,     .  _ 

W4i«B  aga^n  we  5h*li.j>}o»  o}ii"Ntfptaae»«  hhtetK^Sj. 
JUay  feon«tB  sufi  rtrci.e  iJwttows  of  the  fetaif«4       , 
Atrf  skoaii  oor  b!>l<l  foes  witsJ^lo  givj  i|i  a  P«W      _  - 
Wo>l!  show  'tta.  tie|E<»^  CaasHtotioo  and  iHttlSt-- - 
Acdnow  «>Ub^jte<^^£^Jt^J»«  5ai£t«ihej 


Broadside  in  possession  of  Benjamin  F.  Stevens,  Esq. 


i6o  BOSTON 

All  this  was  in  the  Revolutionary  century.  With 
the  coming  of  peace  it  might  have  been  expected  that 
the  doors  of  commerce  would  be  thrown  immediately 
open.  Yet  it  would  have  been  hardly  human  for  the 
mother  country  to  smooth  any  paths  for  the  child  that 
had  cast  off  all  parental  authority.  The  British  West 
India  trade  was  of  course  subject  to  English  legislation. 
It  was  not  long  before  the  merchants  of  Boston,  as  of 
all  our  ports,  found  themselves  forbidden  to  bring  their 
fish  to  the  islands  or  to  carry  the  island  products  to 
England.  These  products  if  brought  first  to  New 
England  could  not  even  be  carried  to  England  in 
British  ships.  This  prohibition  was  followed  in  1784 
by  that  of  exporting  anything  from  the  West  Indies  to 
the  United  States  except  in  British  vessels.  Here  the 
citizens  of  Boston  asserted  themselves,  and  entered  as 
of  old  into  agreements  to  buy  none  of  the  wares  so 
imported.  The  Massachusetts  legislature  passed  meas- 
ures of  retaliation  ;  and  the  national  laws  of  navigation 
and  commerce  reflected  for  some  years  the  British 
policy  of  restriction.  If  success  is  determined  by 
obstacles,  the  commercial  enterprise  of  Boston  could 
not  have  had  a  more  favorable  beginning. 

Not  content  with  the  difficulties  nearest  home,  the 
merchants  of  America,  in  the  earliest  days  of  peace, 
began  turning  their  eyes  to  the  distant  trade  of  China. 
To  New  York  belongs  the  credit  of  sending  out  the 
first  vessel  in  this  trade,  the  Empress  of  the  Seas,  which 
set  sail  for  Canton  in  February  of  1784,  and  was  back 
in  New  York  in  May  of  the  next  year.     Her  super- 


&  i 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      163 

cargo  was  a  Boston  youth  of  twenty,  Samuel  Shaw  by 
name,  whose  service  on  General  Knox's  staff  in  the 
Revolution  had  already  won  him  the  rank  of  major. 
In  his  journal  of  the  outward  voyage  he  tells  of  land- 
ing at  St.  Jago,  an  island  of  the  Cape  de  Verde  group. 
The  officer  of  the  port  was  a  Portuguese.  "  On  telling 
him,"  says  Shaw,  "  by  the  interpreter,  a  negro,  that 
we  were  Americans,  he  discovered  great  satisfaction, 
and  exclaimed  with  an  air  of  pleasure  and  surprise, 
'  Bostonian  !  Bostonian  ! '  "  With  this  —  and  the 
Boston  supercargo  —  to  remember,  the  New  England 
town  may  comfortably  orient  herself  with  the  first  of 
the  Chinese  traders. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  the  town  could 
claim  as  her  own  a  commercial  venture  of  the  first 
importance  and  magnitude.  The  journals  of  Captain 
Cook  "the  navigator"  were  published  in  1784. 
Through  them  the  great  possibilities  of  the  fur  trade 
on  the  northwest  coast  of  America  were  made  known. 
Five  Boston  merchants,  including  the  Bulfinch  whose 
architecture  still  dominates  the  local  landscape,  and 
one  merchant  of  New  York,  joined  themselves  to  enter 
this  new  field.  The  vessels  they  secured  for  the  expe- 
dition were  two ;  the  Columbia^  a  full-rigged  ship  of 
two  hundred  and  twelve  tons,  eighty-three  feet  in 
length,  and  the  Washington^  a  sloop  of  ninety  tons. 
Let  those  who  dread  six  days  of  the  Atlantic  on 
liners  of  fifteen  thousand  tons*  burden,  stop  a  moment 
and  picture  these  cockle-shells  —  as  they  must  appear 
to-day  —  and  the  spirit  of  the  men  who  embarked  in 


1 64  BOSTON 

them  for  the  north  Pacific  and  —  In  the  Columbia  — 
for  the  complete  circling  of  the  globe.  Before  they 
set  sail,  September  30,  1787,  they  provided  themselves 
plentifully  with  silver,  bronze,  and  pewter  medals  com- 
memorating the  expedition,  and  with  useful  tools  and 
useless  trinkets,  — jews-harps,  snuff-boxes,  and  the  like. 
Rounding  the  Horn,  and  sailing  northward,  it  was  the 
little  Washington  which  first  reached  the  northwest 
coast.  While  waiting  for  the  Columbia^  the  sloop's 
crew  had  an  encounter  with  natives,  who  gave  them 
good    reason    to    call    their    anchorage    "  Murderers' 

Harbor."     Then  the 

y^     j/    ^=^7^"*!/^  Columbia  came,  with 

/%0'^k/i^     ^^^y(y     scurvy      on      board. 

^         /y         But  the  cargo  of  furs 
^  was   secured,  and,  in 

pursuance  of  the  owners'  plan,  was  carried  to  Canton 
for  sale.  Stopping  on  the  way  at  Hawaii,  Captain 
Gray  took  on  board  the  Columbia  a  young  chief,  Attoo, 
promising  to  send  him  back  from  Boston  so  soon  as 
might  be.  From  China  the  ship  loaded  with  teas 
sailed  for  home  by  way  of  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope. 
In  August  of  1790  she  dropped  anchor  in  Boston 
harbor,  the  first  American  vessel  to  circumnavigate  the 
earth.  There  were  salutes  from  the  castle  and  the 
town  artillery,  formal  greetings  by  the  collector  of 
the  port  and  Governor  Hancock.  Beside  Captain 
Gray  young  Attoo  marched  up  State  Street,  wearing 
"  a  helmet  of  gay  feathers,  which  glittered  in  the  sun- 
light, and  an  exquisite  cloak  of  the  same  yellow  and 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      167 

scarlet  plumage."  Never  before  had  the  ends  of  the 
earth  and  the  "happy  town  beside  the  sea"  been 
brought  so  near  together. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  this  unprecedented  voyage 
of  the  Columbia  was  not  a  financial  success,  four  of  her 
six  owners  proved  their  faith  in  the  undertaking  by 
sending  her  directly  back  to  the  northwest  coast. 
This  second  voyage,  on  which  she  sailed  September 
28,  1790,  was  destined  to  write  the  good  ship's  name 
on  the  map  of  the  country.  It  was  nearly  two  years 
later  when,  having  taken  Attoo  back  to  Hawaii  in  the 
humble  capacity  of  cabin-boy,  and  having  spent  a 
winter  on  the  coast,  Captain  Gray,  cruising  to  the 
southward,  saw  what  he  took  to  be  the  mouth  of  a 
mighty  river.  There  were  breakers  to  warn  him 
against  entering  it.  To  this  forbidding  aspect  of 
things  we  may  owe  the  entry  in  Vancouver's  journal 
at  the  same  point :  "  Not  considering  this  opening 
worthy  of  attention,  I  continued  our  pursuit  to  the 
northwest."  For  Captain  Gray  the  breakers  were  an 
obstacle  only  to  be  overcome.  After  several  efforts 
he  drove  the  ship  through  them,  and  found  himself  in 
a  noble  stream  of  fresh  water.  Up  this  river  he  sailed 
some  twenty-four  miles  and  having  assured  himself 
that  he  might  continue  farther  if  he  chose,  returned  to 
the  sea.  The  headlands  at  the  mouth  of  the  river  he 
named,  like  a  true  son  of  Boston,  Cape  Hancock  and 
Point  Adams.  He  raised  the  American  flag,  buried 
some  coins  of  his  young  country,  and  named  the 
river  after  his  vessel,  the  Columbia.      Upon  this  dis- 


i68  BOSTON 

covery  and  the  explorations  of  Lewis  and  Clark  in  the 
next  decade,  the  American  government  based  its  suc- 
cessful claim  to  the  Oregon  country.  Yet  for  the 
Boston  merchants  whose  enterprise  wrought  such 
momentous  results,  the  second  voyage,  like  the  first, 
was  but  a  small  success.  In  spite  of  the  abundant 
salutes  and  cheers  which  greeted  the  Columbia  when 
she  sailed  into  Boston  harbor  in  July  of  1793,  the 
ship  and  her  inventory  were  sold  at  once  by  auction  at 
a  Charlestown  wharf.  It  was  hers,  however,  to  open 
the  way  to  an  important  commerce.  In  the  years 
immediately  following,  a  lucrative  trade,  largely  in  the 
hands  of  Boston  merchants,  was  carried  on  in  direct 
pursuance  of  the  Columbia  s  example,  even  in  the 
matter  of  circumnavigation,  with  stops  at  the  Sandwich 
Islands  and  China. 

The  slender  tonnage  of  such  vessels  as  the  Columbia 
and  the  Washington  allies  them  closely  with  the  infancy 
of  commerce.  From  the  extreme  youthfulness  of 
many  of  the  shipmasters  and  supercargoes  of  Boston 
ships  saihng  to  distant  seas,  the  reader  of  later  years 
draws  the  same  impression  of  beginnings.  Mere  boys 
found  themselves  filling  posts  of  responsibiUty  which 
could  not  but  bring  the  man  in  them  to  the  quickest 
possible  development.  Edward  Everett,  in  his  sketch  of 
the  chief  marine  underwriter  of  the  early  days  of  Boston 
commerce,  has  given  us  this  bit  of  record  :  "  The  writer 
of  this  memoir  knows  an  instance  which  occurred  at 
the  beginning  of  this  century,  —  and  the  individual 
concerned,  a  wealthy  and  respected  banker  of  Boston, 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      171 

is  still  living  among  us,  —  in  which  a  youth  of  nineteen 
commanded  a  ship  on  her  voyage  from  Calcutta  to 
Boston,  with  nothing  in  the  shape  of  a  chart  on  board 
but  the  small  map  of  the  world  in  Guthrie's  Geogra- 
phy." In  the  service  of  the  Messrs.  Perkins,  John  P. 
Gushing  went  out  to  China,  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  in 
1 803,  as  clerk  to  the  agent  of  the  firm's  business,  a  man 
but  little  older  than  himself.  This  superior  in  office 
soon  died,  leaving  to  young  Cushing's  care  the  conduct 
of  large  sales  and  purchases,  which  he  managed  so  well 
as  promptly  to  win  himself  a  place  in  the  important 
firm.  Captain  Robert  Bennet  Forbes — another  nephew 
of  the  Messrs.  Perkins,  and  a  typical  merchant  of  the 
somewhat  later  time  in  which  he  flourished  —  gives 
this  summary  of  his  early  career :  "  At  the  age  of 
sixteen  I  filled  a  man's  place  as  third  mate ;  at  the  age 
of  twenty  I  was  promoted  to  a  command  ;  at  the  age  of 
twenty-six  I  commanded  my  own  ship  ;  at  twenty- 
eight  I  abandoned  the  sea  as  a  profession ;  at  thirty- 
six  I  was  at  the  head  of  the  largest  American  house  in 
China."  This  was  the  boy  who  at  thirteen  began  his 
nautical  life  "  with  a  capital  consisting  of  a  Testament, 
a  '  Bowditch,'  a  quadrant,  a  chest  of  sea-clothes,  and  a 
mother's  blessing."  To  this  equipment  should  be 
added  the  advice  of  another  uncle,  Captain  William 
Sturgis :  "Always  go  straight  forward,  and  if  you 
meet  the  devil  cut  him  in  two,  and  go  between  the 
pieces ;  if  any  one  imposes  on  you,  tell  him  to  whistle 
against  the  northwester  and  to  bottle  up  moonshine." 
It  was  a  rough,  effective  training  to  which  boys  like 


172  BOSTON 

young  Bennet  Forbes  were  put.  If  in  instances  like 
his  own,  family  influence  had  its  weight,  —  for  his 
kinsmen,  the  Perkinses,  Sturgises,  Russells,  and  others, 
were  long  in  virtual  control  of  the  China  trade,  —  yet 
the  youths  to  whom  opportunity  came  were  equal  to 
it.  We  are  used  to  hearing  our  own  age  called  that  of 
the  young  man.  These  Boston  bays,  and  Farragut 
in  command  of  a  prize  at  twelve,  spare  us  the  burden 
of  providing  precedents  for  the  future. 

Over  against  these  triumphs  of  youth  may  well  be 
set  another  picture  —  taken  from  the  memoir  by 
Edward  Everett  already  drawn  upon.  He  writes  of 
Thomas  Russell,  who  died  in  1796,  the  pioneer 
of  the  Russian  trade,  the  foremost  merchant  of  his 
time :  "  According  to  the  fashion  of  the  day,  he 
generally  appeared  on  'Change  in  full  dress ;  which 
implied  at  that  time,  for  elderly  persons,  usually  a 
coat  of  some  light-colored  cloth,  small  clothes,  diamond 
or  paste  buckles  at  the  knee  and  in  the  shoes,  silk 
stockings,  powdered  hair,  and  a  cocked  hat ;  in  cold 
weather,  a  scarlet  cloak.  A  scarlet  cloak  and  a  white 
head  were,  in  the  last  century,  to  be  seen  at  the  end 
of  every  pew  in  some  of  the  Boston  churches."  Thus 
between  land  and  sea,  youth  and  age,  the  balance  of 
picturesqueness  is  fairly  struck ;  and  withal  there  is  a 
suggestion  of  old  world  dignity  without  which  any 
impression  of  the  early  Boston  merchants  would  be 
incomplete. 

It  is  not  to  one  of  these  dignified  gentlemen  that 
one  looks  for  such  projects  as  Lord  Timothy  Dexter's 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      173 


proverbial  shipping  of  warm- 
ing pans  to  the  tropics. 
Yet  it  was  a  Boston  mer- 
chant, Frederic  Tudor,  who 
began  to  carry  the  pecul- 
iarly northern  commodity 
of  ice  to  the  West  Indies. 
Even  at  the  centre  of 
"Yankee  notions"  he  was 
regarded  as  a  person  of 
unbridled  fancy.  Indeed, 
the  story  of  this  traffic  in 
ice  is  one  of  the  strangest 
episodes  of  Boston  com- 
merce. As  related  chiefly 
in  an  old  number  of  Scrib- 
ners  Monthly y  it  is  that  in 
1805    a    plague    of  yellow 

fever  wrought  havoc  in  the  Bust  by  H.  Dexter.  In  possession  of  the 
West    India    Islands:      Mr.  Massachusetts  Historical  society. 

Tudor  saw  how  grievously  ice  was  needed,  and  de- 
termined to  supply  it.  Cutting  two  or  three  hun- 
dred tons  from  a  pond  at  Saugus,  he  had  it  hauled  to 
Charlestown,  and  loaded  the  brig  Favorite  for  Marti- 
nique. This,  in  his  own  words,  "  excited  the  derision 
of  the  whole  town  as  a  mad  project.'*  Ridicule  and 
opposition,  however,  were  the  surest  means  of  fixing 
his  purpose.  Though  at  first  without  financial  suc- 
cess, he  proved  that  ice  could  be  carried  to  a  warm 
climate.      Then    the    British    government    saw   what 


^^^.;v^^^T^..vvv^^--- 


Frederic  Tudor. 


PAR    PRIVILEGE    DU    GOUVERNEMENT. 


./iL  V^    i     i» 


jnLujouRD'Hui  7  mars  et  pendant  trois  jours 
consecutifs,  il  sera  depose  en  vente  par 
petites  quantites  une  cargaison  de  Glace , 
tfes-bien  conservee  apportee  en  ce  port , 
de  Boston,  parle  brick  Favorite,  capitaine 
Pearson ;  cette  vente  se  fera  abord,  et  ne 
durera  que  ces  trois  jours  seulement^  le 
brick  devant  se  rendre  a  cefte  epoque 
dans  une  autre  ile. 

MM.  les  habitans  de  St-Pierre.  trouve- 
ront  ici  Toccasion  de  demontrer  (  en  con- 
courant  a  en,  faire  Tacquisition  )  que  cet 
article  pent  devenir  un  objet  dimporta- 
tion  reguliere  dans  la  Colonic. 

Le  prix  est  de  3o  sons  la  livre. 

N.  B,  II  est  necessaire  de  faire  apporter  avec  soi  une 
etofFe  de  laine  ,  ou  un  morceau  de  couverture  pour  enve- 
lopper  la  glace  ;  ce  moyen  la  fait  conserver  plus  longtems. 

Saint-Pierjc  Martinique,  chez  J.-B.  THOUNENS,  Pebe  et  Fils, 
linprimeurs,  da  Gouveraemcnt. 


Advertisement  of  Ice  offered  for  Sale  in  Martinique,  1806. 
From  F-  Tudor's  Journal,  in  possession  of  F.  Tudor,  Esq. 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL 


175 


cooling  benefits  might  thus  be  brought  to  its  West 
Indian  subjects.  Accordingly,  Mr.  Tudor  secured 
the  monopoly,  with  further  special  advantages,  for  the 
sale  of  ice  in  Jamaica.     At  Kingston  he  built  his  ice- 


4u  -io  ^;-^  <-^  '^^^  f^ 


/Vve-4>-«^x-^ 


MOITO   FROM    F.  TUDOR'S   JOURNAL. 


houses.  Havana  and  other  Cuban  ports  were  opened 
to  him  on  similar  terms.  By  degrees  he  built  up  also  a 
large  traffic  with  our  own  southern  cities,  —  Charleston, 
Savannah,  and  New  Orleans.  Then  followed,  in 
1833,  —  at  the  request  of  English  and  American  mer- 
chants in  Calcutta,  —  the  "  ice-king's  "  invasion  of  the 
Far  East.  From  small  beginnings  the  ice  trade  with 
Calcutta  grew  to  proportions  which  made  it  long  an 
important  element  in  holding  for  Boston  the  suprem- 
acy in  all  the  commerce  between  Calcutta  and  the 
United  States.  Rio  Janeiro  must  be  added  to  the 
list  of  tropical  cities  to  which  the  Tudor  ships  carried 
their  cargoes  of  ice.  The  bald  recital  of  the  facts  in 
the  story  of  this  merchant's  success  is  sufficient  to  stir 
the  imagination.  To  do  such  things  with  the  tools  at 
hand  —  sailing  vessels  and  none  of  the  modern  imple- 


176  BOSTON 

ments  of  labor-saving  —  called  for  a  species  of  ability 
in  which  imagination  itself  must  have  played  no  trifling 
part. 

It  may  be  that  this  quality  of  imagination  was  lack- 
ing in  the  Boston  and  Salem  merchants  who  attempted 
in  1842  to  introduce  American  ice  into  London.  One 
of  them  tried  to  attain  this  end  by  demonstrating  the 
merits  of  iced  American  drinks.  He  hired  a  hall, 
as  the  story  goes,  and  trained  a  number  of  men  to 
mix  the  cool  beverages  of  his  native  land.  The 
members  of  the  Fishmonger's  Association  —  presum- 
ably as  fond  of  turtle  as  aldermen  themselves  —  were 
the  guests.  The  waiters  made  an  imposing  entry  — 
but  alas !  the  first  sound  that  met  the  ear  of  the 
American  "promoter,"  expecting  a  chorus  of  approval, 
was  that  of  an  English  voice  calling  for  hot  water,  and 
saying,  "  I  prefer  it  'alf  'n  'alf."  The  American  com- 
pletes the  story,  "  I  made  a  dead  rush  for  the  door, 
next  day  settled  my  bills  in  London,  took  train  for 
Liverpool  and  the  steamer  for  Boston,  and  counted 
up  a  clear  loss  of  ^1200." 

The  counting  of  losses  has  doubtless  had  its  con- 
stant place  in  the  calculations  of  merchants.  To  the 
commoner  counting  of  profits  on  Boston  wharves  may 
be  ascribed  the  practice,  very  general  a  hundred  years 
ago  and  less,  among  persons  of  every  sort  and  condi- 
tion, of  sending  out  "  adventures."  The  sea  was  the 
Wall  Street  of  the  time,  and  the  time  was  that  when 
even  the  uncertainties  of  the  lottery  were  in  good 
repute.     It  is  in  no  way  surprising,  then,  to  find  in 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      177 

a  newspaper  of  1788,  in  the  advertisement  of  two  ships 
about  to  sail  for  the  Isle  of  France  and  India,  this 
announcement :  "  Any  person  desiring  to  adventure 
to  that  part  of  the  world  may  have  an  opportunity 
of  sending  goods  on  freight."  In  executing  these 
commissions,  the  supercargo  became,  besides  the 
owners'  agent,  almost  a  public  servant.  Professional 
men,  women,  boys,  all  classes  of  the  community,  took 
this  inviting  road  to  profit.  At  the  age  of  eight  (i  82 1) 
John  Murray  Forbes  wrote  in  a  letter,  "  My  adventure 
sells  very  well  in  the  village."  A  foot-note  to  the  pas- 
sage in  Mr.  Forbes's  Life  explains  that  the  boy  was  in 
the  habit  of  importing  in  the  Perkins  vessels,  with  the 
help  of  older  relatives,  little  adventures  in  tea,  silk,  or 
possibly  Chinese  toys.  Thus  by  the  time  he  sailed  to 
China  himself,  at  seventeen,  he  had  accumulated  more 
than  a  thousand  dollars  of  his  own. 

That  there  were  heavy  risks  to  be  run  both  by 
owners  and  by  private  speculators,  the  high  rates  of 
insurance,  and  the  fortunes  built  up  by  marine  under- 
writers, clearly  testify.  The  difficult  navigation  laws 
of  England  and  France  during  the  Napoleonic  wars 
provided  an  important  element  in  these  risks.  Our 
own  Embargo  and  War  of  18 12  brought  dangers 
amounting  to  prohibitions,  with  effects  upon  Boston 
commerce  which  have  been  touched  upon  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter.  Among  the  first  vessels  to  arrive  in 
Boston  after  the  restoration  of  peace  were  the  New 
Hazard  and  the  Catch-me-if-you-can,  whose  very  names 
bespoke  the  anxiety  of  the  commercial   class.     With 


lyS  BOSTON 

the  confidence  which  came  with  peace,  new  opportunities 
were  so  firmly  grasped  that  for  forty  years  the  com- 
merce of  Boston  continued  to  spread  to  every  near 
and  distant  port  of  the  world.  So  early  as  1791  there 
is  the  record  of  seventy  sail  leaving  Boston  harbor  in 
a  single  day.  Yet  in  1846  one  may  read  of  a  hundred 
and  twenty-nine  arrivals  in  the  same  brief  period.  That 
one  great  risk  of  the  earlier  time  —  the  risk  of  piracy 
—  should  have  extended  so  far  as  it  did  into  the  later, 
we  of  these  more  shielded  days  cannot  easily  realize. 
There  is  nothing  of  anachronism  in  the  story  of  the 
Atahualpa,  sailing  for  Canton  in  1808,  commanded  by 
Captain  William  Sturgis,  carrying  more  than  three 
hundred  thousand  Spanish  milled  dollars,  and  winning  a 
desperate  battle  with  Chinese  pirates  at  the  mouth  of 
Canton  River.  The  ship  had  previously  been  in  the 
Indian  trade  on  the  northwest  coast,  and  had  then  been 
pierced  for  musketry  and  armed  with  four  six-pound 
cannon.  To  these,  which  Captain  Sturgis  had  carried 
with  him  to  China,  contrary  to  the  orders  of  Theodore 
Lyman,  the  chief  owner  of  the  vessel,  the  defeat  of 
the  pirates  was  largely  due.  It  savors  of  the  stern 
and  strenuous  time,  however,  to  find  it  reported  — 
whether  credibly  or  not  —  that  on  reaching  Boston 
Sturgis  was  obliged  to  pay  freight  on  the  cannons. 
"  Obey  orders  if  you  break  owners,"  was  a  motto  not 
to  be  treated  lightly. 

Less  remote  in  time  and  place  than  these  Chinese 
pirates  stand  the  twelve  Spaniards  brought  to  Boston 
and  tried  on  the  charge  that  "  piratically,  feloniously, 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      179 

violently,  and  against  thewill  '*  of  the  captain  of  the  brig 
Mexican^  which  sailed  from  Salem  in  August,  1832,  for 
Rio,  they  "  did  steal,  rob,  take,  and  carry  away  "  the 
^20,000  in  specie  with  which  a  homeward  cargo  was  to 
have  been  purchased.  This  the  pirates  of  the  schooner 
Panda^  sailing  the  Spanish  Main,  undoubtedly  did.  A 
copy  of  the  Salem  Gazette,  containing  an  account  of  the 
affair,  somehow  fell  into  the  hands  of  Captain  Trotter, 
commanding  H.B.M.  brig  Curlew  on  the  African 
coast.  A  vessel  lying  in  the  river  Nazareth,  and 
answering  the  description  of  the  Panda,  excited  Captain 
Trotter's  suspicions.  With  considerable  difficulty  he 
captured  her  and  her  crew,  whom  he  brought  to  Salem. 
The  trial  in  Boston  occupied  two  weeks.  William  C. 
Codman,  then  a  schoolboy,  has  recalled  the  excitement 
it  produced:  "Every  morning  the  'Black  Maria* 
brought  the  prisoners  from  the  Leverett  Street  Jail  to 
the  court  room.  The  wooden  fence  around  the  Com- 
mon was  perched  upon  in  every  possible  place  from 
which  a  view  of  the  pirates  could  be  obtained.  The 
streets  and  malls  were  so  filled  with  eager  spectators 
that  the  police  had  great  difficulty  in  keeping  the  crowd 
back.''  The  captain,  mate,  and  five  of  the  crew  were 
found  guilty.  President  Andrew  Jackson  reprieved  the 
£rst  officer  on  the  ground  of  a  previous  act  of  humanity 
to  American  citizens.  The  other  pirates  were  executed 
in  Boston,  June  11,  1835.  It  is  this  date,  so  Uttle 
beyond  remembrance  of  many  men  now  living,  which 
brings  the  "  old,  unhappy,  far-off  things  "  of  peril  by 
sea  well  into  what  seems  our  own  time. 


i8o  BOSTON 

To  guard  against  the  risks  which  foresight  could 
avert,  it  was  the  custom  of  ship-owners  to  give  their 
captains,  on  setting  sail,  letters  of  instructions  as  minute 
in  particulars  as  the  orders  of  a  mihtary  or  naval  com- 
mander to  a  subordinate  setting  forth  on  a  difficult 
expedition.  Many  things  which  might  now  be  said 
by  cable  or  rapid  mails  were  then  thought  out  and 
committed  in  advance  to  paper ;  and  nothing  that  the 
old  merchants  have  left  behind  them  speaks  more 
clearly  for  their  breadth  of  vision  and  clearness  of 
thought  and  expression  than  these  characteristic  pro- 
ductions. Their  calling,  as  they  practised  it,  both 
required  and  enriched  that  thing  of  many  definitions 
—  a  liberal  education. 

With  the  superseding  of  sails  by  steam  it  was  inevi- 
table that  much  of  what  would  be  called,  but  for 
McAndrew,  the  romance  of  the  sea,  must  disappear. 
One  of  the  changes  from  the  old  to  the  new  conditions 
has  hardly  yet  ceased  to  manifest  itself.  The  "  forest 
of  masts  "  with  which  such  a  harbor  side  as  that  of 
Boston  used  to  be  lined,  is  still  gradually  dwindling 
away.  In  the  place  of  the  old  tangle  of  spars  and  cord- 
age now  appear  gigantic  funnels,  comparatively  few, 
and  slender  pole-masts  innocent  of  yards.  A  single 
funnel,  however,  may  rise  above  a  cargo  of  fifty  times 
greater  tonnage  than  that  of  a  sailing  ship  a  century 
ago.  Add  to  this  the  considerations  of  speed  and  fre- 
quent voyages,  of  the  quick  lading  and  discharging  of 
cargoes  by  modern  methods,  and  the  new  romance  of 
magnitude  belongs  wholly  to  our  epoch  of  steam. 


THE    HUB    AND    THE   WHEEL      i8i 

For  what  the  new  epoch  was  to  bring  in  the  way  of 
rapid  transatlantic  service,  Boston  was  in  some  meas- 
ure prepared  by  the  Hnes  of  Liverpool  saihng  packets 
estabHshed  in  1822  and  in  1827.  Of  one  of  the  ves- 
sels of  the  earlier  line,  the  Emerald,  there  is  a  tradition 
that  once  she  made  the  voyage  to  Liverpool  and  back  ' 
in  thirty-two  days.  Besides  speed  these  sailing  packets 
offered  to  patrons  what  was  considered  at  the  time  a 
high  degree  of  comfort.  In  this  matter  of  packets 
sailing  at  regular  intervals,  however.  New  York  was 
somewhat  in  advance  of  Boston.  New  York,  more- 
over, had  the  distinction  of  greeting  the  steamers 
Sirius  and  Great  Western  on  their  arrival  on  consecu- 
tive April  days  of  1838.  It  was  the  successful  return 
of  these  two  ships  to  England  that  stirred  the  British 
admiralty  to  action  —  with  what  good  results  to  Boston 
we  shall  see. 

The  action  of  the  admiralty  was  to  invite  proposals 
for  carrying  the  royal  mails  from  Liverpool  to  Halifax, 
Quebec,  and  Boston.  Mr.  Samuel  Cunard,  an  enter- 
prising merchant  of  Halifax,  had  long  been  considering  . 
the  possibilities  of  transatlantic  steam  service.  Here 
was  his  opportunity,  and  the  bid  which  he  promptly 
made  for  this  postal  route  was  accepted  at  a  contract 
price  of  ^55,000  a  year.  Halifax  was  to  be  the  east- 
ern terminus,  from  which  smaller  boats  were  to  run  to 
Boston  and  Quebec.  To  this  arrangement  some  ener- 
getic citizens  of  Boston  entered  an  immediate  protest. 
The  resolutions  which  they  passed,  April  20,  1839, 
a   week   after    the   promise   of  the   new    line    reached 


i82  BOSTON 

Boston,  pointed  out  the  advantage  of  using  Halifax 
merely  as  a  place  of  call  and  making  Boston  the  true 
terminus.  It  happened  that  just  at  that  time  the  north- 
eastern boundary  dispute,  over  the  line  between  Maine 
and  New  Brunswick,  was  at  a  critical  point.  Shrewdly 
enough  the  Boston  resolutions,  referring  to  this  dis- 
pute, expressed  the  faith  of  the  meeting  in  the  new 
"  enterprise  as  a  harbinger  of  future  peace,  both  with 
the  mother  country  and  the  provinces,  being  persuaded 
that  frequent  communication  is  the  most  effectual  mode 
to  wear  away  all  jealousies  and  prejudices  which  are 
not  yet  extinguished."  The  resolutions  hastily  de- 
spatched to  Mr.  Cunard  reached  him  on  the  point  of 
his  leaving  London  for  America.  He  lost  no  time  in 
taking  them  to  the  Lords  of  the  Admiralty,  offering, 
as  Mr.  H.  A.  Hill  has  summed  it  up,  **^  to  increase 
the  size  and  power  of  his  ships,  and  to  extend  the  main 
route  to  Boston,  promising  also,  half  jocosely,  to  settle 
the  northeastern  boundary  question,  if  they  would  add 
ten  thousand  pounds  per  annum  to  the  subsidy.  His 
proposition  was  accepted,  and  a  new  contract  was 
signed  in  May."  So  it  was  that  Boston,  destined  to 
fall  far  below  New  York  as  a  port  for  transatlantic 
steamers,  secured  the  early  supremacy,  and  perhaps 
made  its  own  contribution  to  the  settlement  of  the 
boundary  dispute. 

So  used  is  the  human  mind  becoming  to  the  mar- 
vellous in  triumphs  over  nature  that  the  first  comers 
from  Europe  by  air  ship  —  if  they  ever  come — will 
probably  receive  a  less  enthusiastic  welcome  than  that 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      183 

which  the  city  of  Boston  extended  to  the  first  arriving 
Cunarders.  In  June  and  July  of  1840  the  Unicorn 
and  the  Britannia  came  safe  to  the  new  docks  of  the 
company  in  East  Boston.  Banquets,  salutes,  and  many 
flags  celebrated  the  events.  No  doubt  local  pride 
played  an  important  part  in  the  Boston  sentiment  of 
this  time.  Within  four  years  this  pride  was  put  to  the 
test.  The  New  York  papers  had  been  pointing  out 
all  the  contrasts,  unfavorable  to  Boston,  between  the 
ports  of  the  two  cities.  As  if  indeed  to  adorn  their 
tale,  Boston  harbor  froze  over  in  January  of  1844,  and 
the  advertised  sailing  of  the  Britannia  then  in  dock 
seemed  surely  to  be  impossible.  But  the  merchants 
of  Boston  would  not  have  it  so.  They  met  and  voted 
to  cut  a  way,  at  their  own  expense,  through  the  ice, 
that  the  steamer  might  sail  practically  on  time.  The 
contract  for  cutting  the  necessary  channels  was  given 
to  merchants  engaged  like  Frederic  Tudor  in  the  ex- 
port of  ice  —  not  from  the  harbor.  Their  task  was 
to  cut  within  the  space  of  three  days  a  channel  about 
ten  miles  long.  For  tools  they  had  the  best  machinery 
used  in  cutting  fresh-water  ice,  and  horse-power  was 
employed.  The  ice  was  from  six  to  twelve  inches  in 
thickness.  As  the  Advertiser  of  February  2,  1844, 
described  the  scene :  "  A  great  many  persons  have 
been  attracted  to  our  wharves  to  witness  the  operations, 
and  the  curious  spectacle  of  the  whole  harbor  frozen 
over,  and  the  ice  has  been  covered  by  skaters,  sleds, 
and  even  sleighs.  Tents  and  booths  were  erected  upon 
the  ice,  and  some  parts  of  the  harbor  bore  the  appear- 


1 84  BOSTON 

ance  of  a  Russian  holiday  scene."  On  February  3  the 
work  was  done,  and  the  Britannia,  steaming  slowly 
through  the  lane  of  open  water,  lined  on  either  side  by 
thousands  of  cheering  spectators,  made  her  way  to 
the  sea.  Whatever  the  New  York  critics  may  have 
thought,  the  English  managers  of  the  company  must 
have  felt  that  the  people  di  Boston  were  good  friends 
to  have. 

In  the  natural  course  of  events  other  lines  besides 
the  Cunard  were  established  ;  and  if  the  outreaching 
spirit  of  Boston  had  travelled  as  rapidly  overland  to 
the  west  as  it  had  always  moved  by  sea,  there  would 
probably  be  nothing  but  progress  to  record  of  Boston 
as  a  port.  Writing  of  the  time  when  the  first  Cunard- 
ers  came,  Mr.  Hill  reminds  us  "  that  the  trains  start- 
ing from  Boston  then  reached  their  limits  respectively 
at  Newburyport,  Exeter,  Nashua,  Springfield,  Stoning- 
ton,  and  New  Bedford."  It  was  not  long  before  the 
western  railroad  frontier  was  pushed  from  Springfield 
to  Albany  and  the  Hudson.  But  here,  unhappily,  it 
stopped,  and  for  nearly  thirty  years,  so  far  as  through 
lines  were  concerned,  it  went  no  farther.  During 
this  period  quarrels  between  the  two  lines  that  trav- 
ersed Massachusetts,  and  the  deadening  influence  of 
state  aid  where  private  enterprise  should  have  been  at 
work,  had  the  most  untoward  results.  Far  to  the  west 
the  development  of  the  Michigan  Central  and  the 
Chicago,  Burlington,  and  Quincy  railroads,  largely 
through  Boston  capital  and  energy,  spoke  for  what 
might  have  been  done  nearer  home.      Meanwhile  the 


THE    HUB   AND    THE   WHEEL      187 

western  railroad  connections  with  New  York  were 
wisely  and  rapidly  improved.  To  quote  from  Mr. 
Charles  Francis  Adams :  "  While  the  great  corpora- 
tions which  served  other  cities  were  absorbing  into 
themselves  the  thoroughfares  in  the  valley  of  the 
Mississippi,  the  Legislature  of  the  State  of  Massachu- 
setts kept  its  eyes  steadily  fixed  on  the  Hoosac  Moun- 
tain.'* To  this,  with  other  causes,  was  due  the  decline 
of  Boston  shipping.  The  important  commerce  with 
Calcutta  reached  its  climax  in  the  years  between  1856 
and  1859,  and  thereafter  gradually  fell  away,  to  the 
advantage  of  New  York.  So  it  was  with  other 
branches  of  maritime  trade.  In  1868  the  Cunard 
Company,  which  for  the  first  eight  years  of  its  exist- 
ence had  run  no  vessels  to  New  York,  transferred  all 
its  mail  steamers  to  the  rival  port,  and  sent  to  Boston 
only  freighters,  which  after  loading  in  Boston  pro- 
ceeded to  New  York  to  complete  their  cargoes.  For 
nearly  three  years  not  a  single  steamer  sailed  from 
Boston  direct  to  Liverpool.  Then  came  the  revival. 
The  representatives  of  railroads,  steamships,  and  the 
Board  of  Trade  put  their  heads  together,  and  matters 
began  to  mend.  Year  by  year  the  volume  of  exports 
and  imports  showed  a  steady,  healthy  growth,  until 
Boston  has  found. herself,  if  not  as  of  old*  the  first  port 
of  America,  yet  one  which  at  last  reaps  the  commercial 
advantages  belonging  to  the  town  of  Emerson's  defini- 
tion, with  its  streets  leading  not  only  "  downward  to 
the  sea,"  but  also,  as  the  railroads  tardily  did  their 
work,  "  landward  to  the  west." 


i88  BOSTON 

It  is  a  partial  view  of  the  outreaching  spirit  of  Bos- 
ton—  especially  as  Boston  may  be  taken  as  typical 
of  New  England  —  which  ignores  the  expression  that 
spirit  found  in  the  establishment  of  Christian  missions 
in  the  islands  of  the  sea  and  the  kingdoms  beyond. 
Whatever  one  may  think  of  that  work,  its  means  and 
its  ends,  the  facts  remain  that  the  nineteenth  century 
saw  its  beginnings  in  America,  that  the  "  orthodox " 
churches  of  New  England  were  the  pioneers  in  the 
work,  and  that  the  men  at  home  whose  financial  sup- 
port made  it  possible  were"  frequently  of  that  commer- 
cial class  in  whose  interest  the  ships  of  Boston  sailed 
abroad.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  "  merchant  princes  " 
of  Boston  were  largely  imbued  with  the  spirit  which  has 
been  most  active  in  carrying  Christianity  to  foreign 
lands.  They  were  not.  But  throughout  the  nine- 
teenth century  there  was  a  constant  element  in  the 
community  —  in  Boston  and  all  New  England  towns 
—  which  derived  from  its  Puritan  ancestry  so  firm  a 
faith  in  its  modes  of  spiritual  life  as  inherently  the  life 
for  every  man  of  every  race  that  the  maintenance^of 
American  missions  became  a  vital  duty.  It  is  not  the 
least  significant  aspect  of  this  portion  of  New  England 
history  that  the  secular  record  of  it  is  extremely  meagre. 
This  may  probably  be  ascribed  to  the  fact  that  the 
men  and  women  for  the  records  of  whose  zeal  and 
generosity  we  look  in  vain  were  not  of  the  class  which 
either  writes  or  becomes  the  theme  of  biography. 
They  were  of  the  rank  and  file,  and  for  that  reason 
surely  should  not  be  overlooked. 


THE    HUB    AND    THE    WHEEL      189 

Whether  we  turn,  then,  to  the  great  merchants  or 
to  the  clerks  and  gentlewomen  who  sent  forth  their 
small  adventures,  or  yet  to  that  other  class  whose 
adventures  were  for  spiritual  ends,  we  find  in  the 
Boston  community  a  constant  quality  of  distant  vision 
belying  the  reputation  of  the  town  for  contented  ab- 
sorption in  its  own  affairs.  The  Autocrat's  image  of 
the  hub,  adopted  by  all  the  world,  carried  with  it  an 
inevitable  picture  of  the  "  tire  of  all  creation."  It 
would  be  but  a  sorry  hub  that  was  no  better  for  the 
wheel  at  the  end  of  its  spokes.  To  those  who  have 
determined  the  relations  of  Boston  with  the  world  at 
large,  the  town  has  owed  many  of  its  best  things. 
The  distinguished  merchants  won  their  distinction  not 
so  much  by  their  wealth  as  by  the  integrity  which 
earned  it  and  the  generosity  which  devoted  it  to 
public  uses.  A  list  of  the  foundations  for  charitable 
and  educational  purposes  in  and  about  Boston  —  such 
as  a  "  Perkins  Institution,"  a  "  Parkman  Professorship," 
a  "  Bromfield  Fund" — would  reveal  to  the  statistical 
mind  a  large  proportion  of  names  identified  with  the 
mercantile  history  of  the  place.  To  bring  silk  and 
spices  from  over  seas,  to  win  the  fight  with  pirates,  to 
open  a  frozen  harbor  to  the  early  steamships,  to  tunnel 
a  mountain  and  reach  the  west  —  all  these  are  fine, 
brave  things.  Yet  it  is  more  to  make  your  native 
town  the  richer  by  the  spirit  which  has  triumphed  over 
such  difficulties  and  by  the  fruits  of  that  spirit.  This 
is  what  the  merchants  of  Boston  have  done. 


VII 

THE    BOSTON    RELIGION  '* 

IT  is  a  fact  worth  noticing  that 
the  Boston  minister  who  in 
1750  preached  a  political  ser- 
mon which  has  frequently  been 
called  "  the  morning  gun  of  the 
Revolution "  was,  after  Roger 
Williams,  the  first  prominent 
dissenter  from  the  established 
church  of  New  England.  Both  the  Unitarians  and  the 
UniversaHsts  claim  the  Rev.  Jonathan  Mayhew  as  their 
first  representative  in  the  Boston  ministry.  A  person 
is  often  the  best  illustration  of  a  tendency,  and  that 
which  the  minister  of  the  West  Church  illustrates  is 
the  parallelism  of  freedom  in  political  and  religious 
thought.  The  American  revolt  from  the  established 
civil  authority  began  and  amazingly  throve  in  Boston. 
It  was  but  natural,  therefore,  that  the  first  and  most 
conspicuous  departure  from  the  accepted  order  of  things 
in  religion  should  have  the  same  local  background. 
The  fact  that  the  severity  of  the  Puritan  order  of  New 
England  gave  wider  room  for  reaction  than  could  be 
found  elsewhere,  only  enhances  the  fitness  of  the  scene. 
Local  in   its   causes   and  conditions,  the  ecclesiastical 

190 


-  |J  -  1o:NAT1U.\   MAYIJIiVV.  1)})-PAST( 
,;1£- IX  BOSTON,  L\  M-7»V  ENlikLM)^ 
W  AND  TlKLHilOVS  LlBERTiES  OF ; 
f^y^  ^VHO.OVS'JKPfJEI)  BY  PVBIJC  EVER(^! 

>.'  ivf.y  v!nj,Aj])c/'.?.xvi,Ai 


14 


F  T}!].:  WE.SI'l-.in'llC.M 
\SSFRTOR  OF  THE  CIVIE 
( H'X'i'RY  an:  >  >i AXKLXJ  >, 
.DIED  OFAMr.W()VS  YWm. 
ID  XXXXV      -^  - 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION*^         193 

revolution  which  followed  the  political  belongs  yet 
more  intimately  to  local  history.  But  it  is  so  inter- 
mingled with  the  history  of  religious  progress  in  the 
last  century  that  once  again  the  local  records  take  on 
a  broader  significance. 

How  truly  the  Calvinistic  Congregationalism  of  New 
England  was  the  established  church,  we  hardly  need 
remind  ourselves.  It  was  the  faith  once  delivered  to 
the  saints,  the  Puritan  fathers,  and  duly  received  from 
them ;  it  was  guarded  by  civil  laws  taxing  the  whole 
community  for  church  support,  and  dealing  with  eccle- 
siastical affairs  as  they  are  treated  only  where  church 
and  state  are  one.  Into  the  ministry  of  this  order 
gradually  crept  during  the  closing  years  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  many  doubts  regarding  doctrines  hitherto 
accepted  without  question,  especially  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  and  of  human  depravity.  From  the  "  Great 
Awakening,"  before  the  middle  of  the  century,  there 
must  needs  have  been  a  re-awakening  with  revulsions 
of  feeling.  Free  political  inquiry  doubtless  played 
its  own  part  in  the  change.  Perhaps,  too,  the  general 
emancipation  of  thought  which  the  first  burst  of  sym- 
pathy with  the  French  Revolution  brought  to  many 
Americans  had  its  indirect  influence.  The  similar 
change  of  sentiment  in  Salem  has  been  said  to  have 
come  "  through  its  navigators  even  more  than  through 
its  critics  and  theologians.  As  soon  as  they  came  into 
those  warm  latitudes,  their  crusts  of  prejudice  melted 
and  cracked  from  them  like  films  of  ice  ;  and  in  place 
of  the  narrow  tradition  they  carried  out  with  them,  they 


194 


BOSTON 


brought  home  the  germs  of  a  broad  religion  of  human- 
ity." The  conservatism  of  the  inland  towns  as  com- 
pared with  the  seaports  —  Boston  even  more  than 
Salem  —  lends  some  color  to  this  theory  of  a  Unita- 
rian writer.  Whatever  the  local  influences  may  have 
been,  it  is  declared  that  by  the  year  1800  there  was 
hardly  a  single  occupant  of  a  Congregational  pulpit  in 
Boston  whose  orthodoxy  would  have  stood  unchal- 
lenged fifty  years  later.  The  zeal  of  the  minority  in 
the  open  division  soon  to  come  between  the'  old  and 
the  new  theology  is  the  more  remarkable  when  these 
unequal  numbers  are  remembered. 

When  the  nineteenth  century  began  there  was  but 
one  church  in  Boston  avowedly  Unitarian.  That  was 
King's  Chapel,  and  its  case  was  anomalous.  The  mere 
statement  that  "  the  first  Episcopal  Church  in  New 
England  became  the  first  Unitarian  Church  in  Amer- 
ica" sums  up  the  strange  situation.  With  the  departure 
of  the  Tories,  who  before  the  Revolution  had  formed 
a  large  part  of  the  congregation,  its  use  for  the  services 
of  the  Church  of  England  seemed  to  come  to  a  natural 
end.  Even  its  name  of  King's  Chapel  was  changed  by 
the  people  of  Boston,  though  never  by  vote  of  the 
parish,  to  the  "  Stone  Chapel,"  and  so  it  was  com- 
monly called  well  into  the  nineteenth  century.  For 
five  years  before  1782  it  was  used  by  the  Old  South 
congregation.  Then  the  young  James  Freeman  took 
charge  of  the  reassembled  flock  as  "reader."  But  the 
strong  Unitarian  influences  of  the  time  rendered  many 
formulae  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  difficult  for 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION'* 


95 


him  and  the  people  to  repeat  with  sincerity.  Accord- 
ingly they  authorized  him  to  revise  the  Prayer-book. 

Revision  was  in  the  air.  Only  a  few  years  later  a 
minister  vigilant  for  the  ancient  faith  discovered  in  a 
Boston  bookstore  a  version  of  the  Divine  and  Moral 
Songs  of  Dr.  Watts,  out  of  which  the  doctrines  of  the 
Trinity  and  the  Divinity  of  Christ  had  been  carefully 
edited.  The  good  man  promptly  exposed  it  in  a  news- 
paper article  under  the  title  "  Beware  of  Counterfeits." 

Of  the  Prayer-book  revision  it  may  be  said  that  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  of  America  had  as  yet  no 
definite  organization,  and  the  King's  Chapel  congrega- 
tion—  always  in  dissent  from  the  established  church 
of  New  England  —  felt  itself  under  no  obligation  to 
wait  till  the  new  Episcopal  Church  adapted  the  Eng- 
lish Prayer-book  to  American  use.  This  was  not 
accomplished  till  1789.  Mr.  Freeman,  however,  did 
wish  to  remain  in  the  Anglican  communion,  and  applied 
for  Episcopal  ordination  both  to  Bishop  Seabury  of 
Connecticut  and  to  Bishop  Provoost  of  New  York. 
Their  only  course  was  to  refuse  his  application  ;  for 
revising  the  Trinity  out  of  the  liturgy,  which  they  were 
sworn  to  support,  was  not  atoned  for  even  by  so  com- 
mendable an  addition  to  the  catechism  as  the  question, 
"  In  what  manner  should  we  treat  the  inferior  animals  ?" 
Denied  Episcopal  ordination,  Mr.  Freeman  did  not  find 
it  difficult  to  persuade  himself  and  his  congregation 
that  laymen  could  ordain  him  with  equal  validity. 
Whereupon,  in  1787,  certain  members  of  the  Chapel 
congregation   handed    him   a   Bible,   with   appropriate 


196  BOSTON 

words,  and  he  became  their  minister  —  the  first  pro- 
fessedly Unitarian  minister  in  America.  There  were 
protests  from  Episcopal  clergymen  and  from  some  of 
the  proprietors  of  the  church,  expressing  a  sense  of 
wrong  and  loss  which  time  has  not  wholly  removed. 
Later  on  there  were  com.plications,  both  serious  and 
amusing,  in  the  administering  of  moneys  bequeathed 
by  loyal  churchmen  before  the  Revolution.  But  Mr. 
Freeman's  step  was  never  retraced  ;  indeed,  subsequent 
revisions  have  removed  the  Chapel  liturgy  even  farther 
than  he  carried  it  from  that  of  the  King. 

What  the  constant  use  of  a  liturgy,  with  a  fixed  form 
of  words,  obliged  Mr.  Freeman  to  do  openly,  the  other 
ministers  of  Boston,  left  to  their  own  devices  in  the 
conduct  of  public  worship,  could  and  did  achieve  almost 
unnoticed.  Instead  of  denying  the  doctrine  of  the 
Trinity  and  other  tenets  more  purely  Calvinistic,  it 
became  their  practice  to  ignore  such  matters.  There 
were  still  many  points  upon  which  teachers  of  Chris- 
tianity were  agreed,  and  on  them  the  emphasis  was 
laid.  So  it  might  have  gone  on  in  peace  and  quietness 
for  years  to  come,  but  for  the  fatal  propensity  of  small 
causes  to  lead  to  great  effects. 

The  filling  of  the  vacant  Hollis  Professorship  of 
Divinity  at  Harvard  in  1805  was  one  of  these  causes. 
The  election  of  the  Rev.  Henry  Ware,  whose 
spoken  and  written  words  had  shown  him  a  pro- 
nounced Unitarian,  was  bitterly  contested,  but  without 
avail.  The  orthodox  Overseers  and  friends  of  the 
college  saw  in   Mr.  Ware's  appointment  nothing  but 


King's  Chapel,  corner  of  School  and  Tremont  streets. 


THE    BOSTON    RELIGION" 


99 


danger  and  disaster.  Their  spokesman  was  the  Rev. 
Jedidiah  Morse  of  Charlestown,  father  of  the  in- 
ventor of  the  Morse  alphabet  of  telegraphy.  His 
pamphlet  on  The  True  Reasons  for  opposing  Mr. 
Ware's  election  set  forth  the  undoubted  Calvinistic 
orthodoxy  of  Mr.  Hollis,  the  London  merchant  whose 
bequest  supported  the  professorship,  and  the  particular 
pains  he  took,  even  to  receiving  a  bond  from  the  cor- 
poration, to  insure  the  administration  of  the  fund  in 
accordance  with  his  views.  Dr.  Morse  further  com- 
plained that  he  was  not  permitted  to  present  these 
reasons  to  the  Overseers,  and  that  in  spite  of  Mr. 
Ware's  known  antagonism  to  the  theology  specified  in 
the  Hollis  bequest,  the  college  did  not  trouble  itself 
to  examine  into  his  views. 

The  pamphlet  was  the  first  of  many  trumpet  calls 
ringing  with  the  question,  "  Who  is  on  the  Lord's 
side  ?  "  Thenceforth  it  was  hard  for  the  neutral- 
minded  to  escape  taking  some  definite  position.  Ten 
years  after  the  pamphlet  was  written.  Dr.  Morse 
wrote  of  it :  "  It  was  then  and  has  been  ever  since, 
considered  by  one  class  of  people  as  my  unpardonable 
offence,  and  by  another  class  as  the  best  thing  I  ever 
did.  One  of  the  former  party  is  said  to  have  declared 
soon  after  its  publication  that  it  was  so  bad  a  thing  that 
it  would  more  than  counterbalance  all  the  good  I  had 
done  or  should  do  if  I  lived  ever  so  long ;  and  one  of 
the  other  party  said,  if  I  had  never  done  any  good 
before  I  made  that  publication  nor  should  do  any 
afterward,   that   single   deed   would   of  itself  produce 


200  BOSTON 

effects  of  sufficient  importance  and  utility  to  mankind 
to  be  worth  living  for." 

When  an  atmosphere  is  charged  with  opposing  con- 
victions of  such  positivenesSj  the  next  disturbance  is 
merely  a  question  of  time.  Meanwhile,  in  natural 
sequence  from  the  HoUis  Professorship  dispute,  came 
the  founding  of  the  Andover  Seminary  {1808)  and  the 
Park  Street  Church  (1809),  as  strong  pillars  of  Ortho- 
doxy. The  explosion  that  soon  followed,  in  18 15,  was 
due  in  large  measure  again  to  the  hand  of  Dr.  Morse. 
In  Belsham's  life  of  the  English  Unitarian,  Lindsey, 
appeared  a  chapter  on  American  Unitarianism,  contain- 
ing letters  from  Boston  which  showed  how  many  of 
the  ministers  outwardly  Orthodox  were  at  heart  Uni- 
tarian, and  in  this  word,  as  used  by  an  Englishman, 
there  was  implied  a  much  lower  conception  of  the 
divine  nature  of  Christ  than  that  which  really  prevailed 
in  Boston.  Here,  thought  Dr.  Morse,  was  damaging 
testimony.  He  caused  the  chapter  to  be  reprinted  in 
Boston  as  a  pamphlet,  which  he  proceeded  to  review 
in  his  magazine,  The  Panoplist.  The  upshot  of  his  con- 
tention was  that  the  time  had  come  for  calling  things 
by  their  right  names  :  if  the  Boston  ministers  were 
Unitarian,  let  them  be  known  as  such,  and  let  the 
Orthodox  deny  them  Christian  fellowship,  or  pulpit 
exchanges.  Are  you  of  the  Boston  religion  or  of  the 
Christian  religion  ?  was  his  crucial  question  ;  to  which, 
after  the  Yankee  fashion,  a  Boston  layman,  John 
Lowell,  made  answer  by  a  counter-question  in  the 
pamphlet,  Are  you  a  Christian  or  a  Calvinist  ? 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         201 

Thus  the  dividing  lines  were  clearly  drawn  at  last, 
and  those  who  most  wished  to  avoid  partisanship  and 
controversy  found  themselves  involved  in  both.  To 
the  Unitarians  especially  a  controversy  was  unwelcome. 
They  objected  to  the  very  name  of  Unitarian.  As  Dr. 
G.  E.  Ellis  has  expressed  their  feeling,  "  The  term 
Orthodoxy  covers  the  whole  faith  of  one  party ;  the 
term  Unitarian  is  at  best  but  a  definition  of  one  of 
the  doctrinal  tenets  of  the  other  party."  There  were 
those  who  preferred  and  used  the  name  of  "  liberal 
Christians."  Against  this  term  stood  the  feeling  of 
those  for  whom  Dr.  N.  L.  Frothingham  said,  "  To 
insinuate  that  others  are  illiberal  is  certainly  a  strange 
way  of  proving  one's  generosity."  To  set  themselves 
off  as  a  sect  at  all  was  indeed  the  last  thing  they 
wanted.  Their  very  pride  was  in  individual  judg- 
ment —  the  protestant's  right  to  everlasting  protest. 
"  If  any  two  of  us,  walking  arm  in  arm  on  one  side  of 
a  street,"  said  their  historian,  "  should  find  that  we 
perfectly  accorded  in  opinion,  wx  should  feel  bound 
to  separate  instantly,  and  the  strife  would  be  as  to 
which  should  get  the  start  in  crossing."  Yet  if  these 
differing  brothers  were  drawn  into  controversy  against 
their  will,  our  sympathy  must  not  be  all  with  them  ; 
the  more  united  body  which  had  to  contend  with  so 
elusive  a  foe  is  also  to  be  remembered.  To  them  the 
sermon  which  William  Ellery  Channing,  the  recog- 
nized leader  of  the  "  liberals,"  preached  at  the  ordina- 
tion of  Jared  Sparks  at  Baltimore,  in  18 19,  must  have 
been  a  welcome  production.     It  gave  them  something 


202  BOSTON 

definite  to  attack.  Under  the  characteristic  text, 
"  Prove  all  things  ;  hold  fast  that  which  is  good,"  it 
stated  clearly  the  beliefs  and  disbeliefs  of  Unitarian 
Christianity,  though  it  does  not  appear  that  the 
name  by  which  his  sect  was  to  be  known  once  passed 
the  preacher's  lips. 

None  had  been  more  reluctant  than  Dr.  Channing 
to  see  a  new  sect  founded.  As  Wesley  at  first  would 
have  kept  Methodism  within  the  Church  of  England, 
so  Channing  would  have  preferred  to  see  the  Congre- 
gational body  undivided,  but  leavened  by  Unitarianism. 
To  his  opponents,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Baltimore 
sermon  served  as  the  signal  gun  of  a  pamphlet  war. 
The  Andover  professors,  Leonard  Woods  and  Moses 
Stuart,  came  briskly  on  the  field  with  Letters  to 
Unitarians  and  Letters  to  Dr.  Channing.  To  Dr. 
Woods,  the  Rev.  Henry  Ware  made  prompt  reply, 
and  typical  of  the  persistency  of  the  combatants 
stand  the  titles  in  Dr.  Woods's  collected  works  of  a 
Reply  to  Dr.  Ware's  Letters  (1821)  and  Remarks 
on  Dr.  Ware's  Answer  (1822).  To  follow  the  war- 
fare, even  in  such  lists  of  battlefields,  would  be 
no  small  task.  Of  its  rancorous  temper  on  both 
sides  there  is  too  abundant  testimony.  As  in  most 
religious  disputes,  there  was  no  initial  agreement  upon 
the  terms  of  controversy.  Each  side  maintained  that 
the  other  misrepresented  its  views,  and  treated  as  its 
own  pecuHar  possessions,  beHefs  and  sacraments  com- 
mon to  all  Christians.  The  Unitarians  complained 
especially  that  the  Calvinists  refused  to  interpret  fairly 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         203 

or  abide  by  the  words  of  Calvin.  On  the  other  hand, 
a  Unitarian  historian  has  written  even  of  the  gentle, 
honest,  Channing's  Baltimore  sermon,  "  No  believer 
in  the  Trinity  that  ever  lived,  it  may  be,  would  admit 
his  statement  of  it  to  be  correct."  Still  another 
historian.  Dr.  Ellis,  admits  with  regret  "  the  super- 
ciliousness and  effrontery  even,  with  which  some 
Unitarians  took  for  granted  that  the  great  change  in 
religious  opinions  and  methods  advocated  by  them 
could  perfect  and  establish  itself  in  this  community  as 
a  matter  of  course.  .  .  .  The  most  assured  and  con- 
fident of  the  new  party  did  not  scruple  to  declare  that 
Orthodoxy  was  past  apologizing  for,  and  ought  to 
retire  gracefully  with  the  bats  and  owls." 

All  this  was  disturbing  enough  to  a  town  in  which 
the  church,  the  clergy,  and  religious  matters  had  been 
from  the  first  of  paramount  importance.  But  to  the 
theological  odium  and  ill  temper  were  added  the 
complications  of  the  civil  law.  If  there  was  ground 
for  Orthodox  complaint  in  the  administration  of  the 
Hollis  legacy,  there  was  ample  provocation  to  action 
at  law  when  the  conservatives  saw  the  church  buildings, 
lands,  and  plate  pass  into  the  hands  of  the  hberals. 
The  process  of  change  from  the  old  to  the  new  faith 
came  about  in  various  ways,  frequently  through  the 
death  or  retirement  of  the  old  and  more  conservative 
minister,  and  the  election  of  a  young  apostle  of  the 
new  from  Cambridge.  Thus  Lyman  Beecher  saw  and 
described  the  means  by  which  the  Unitarians  won  their 
ends  :  "  They  have  sowed  tares  while  men  slept,  and 


204 


BOSTON 


Lyman  Beecher. 


grafted  heretical  churches  on  Orthodox  stumps,  and 
this  is  still  their  favorite  plan.  Everywhere,  when  the 
minister  dies,  some  society's  committee  will  be  cut  and 
dried,  ready  to  call  in  a  Cambridge  student,  split  the 
church,  get  a  majority  of  the  society,  and  take  house, 
funds,  and  all."  The  minority  defeated  in  such  divi- 
sions resisted  and  sometimes  established  a  new  parish. 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         205 

To  this  they  felt,  and  contended,  that  the  prop- 
erty of  the  church  should  pass.  But  the  courts  of 
Massachusetts  upheld  the  opposite  contention.  In 
the  test  case  of  the  Dedham  parish  (1820),  which 
provided  precedents  for  future  decisions,  the  Supreme 
Court  put  itself  on  record  with  a  ruling  highly  favora- 
ble to  the  claims  generally  made  by  the  Unitarians  in 
such  disputes.  In  1830  Chief  Justice  Shaw  handed 
down  a  decision,  in  the  case  of  a  country  parish,  that 
although  only  two  church  members  remained  with 
the  church  when  the  Orthodox  minister  and  all  the 
rest  of  his  people  seceded,  those  two  were  the  church, 
and  retained  all  its  property.  As  Harriet  Beecher 
Stowe,  writing  of  the  period  of  Lyman  Beecher's 
Boston  ministry,  regarded  such  verdicts:  "The  judges 
on  the  bench  were  Unitarian,  giving  decisions  by  which 
the  peculiar  features  of  church  organization,  so  care- 
fully ordained  by  the  Pilgrim  fathers,  had  been  nulli- 
fied." Even  after  the  middle  of  the  century,  an 
Orthodox  critic  of  the  controversy  wrote :  "  Church 
after  church  was  plundered  of  its  property,  even  to 
its  communion  furniture  and  records.  We  called  this 
proceeding  plunder  thirty  years  ago.  We  call  it  by 
the  same  hard  name  now.  And  we  solemnly  call 
upon  those  Unitarian  churches,  which  are  still  in  pos- 
session of  this  plunder,  to  return  it.  They  cannot 
prosper  with  it.  And  we  call  upon  the  courts  of 
Massachusetts  to  revoke  these  unrighteous  decisions, 
and  put  the  Congregational  churches  of  the  state  upon 
their  original  and  proper  basis." 


2o6  BOSTON 

In  1833  the  Massachusetts  law  formally  separated 
the  functions  of  church  and  town.  Thus  the  dis- 
establishment which  had  already  been  virtually  ac- 
complished in  Boston  became  a  fact  throughout  the 
commonwealth.  Of  course  the  believers  in  the  old 
order  regarded  the  whole  change  with  genuine  pain 
and  sorrow.  In  every  process  of  evolution  it  is  the 
fate  of  the  minority  to  suffer  something  at  the  hands 
of  the  greater  number.  Here  the  simple  fact,  in 
Boston  and  the  towns  most  directly  under  its  influence, 
rather  than  in  the  state  at  large,  was  that  the  majority 
of  those  who  inherited  the  best  traditions  of  Puritanism 
had  come  to  prefer  a  less  rigid  form  of  faith,  which 
took  its  form,  natural  to  the  time  and  place,  in 
Unitarianism.  It  was  not  through  any  infusion  of 
new  blood  into  the  community  that  the  change  came 
about.  In  the  straitest  sect  of  New  Englanders  the 
"  liberals  "  found  their  best  strength.  From  whatever 
cause,  they  "  looked  about  them,''  as  Professor  Wendell 
has  said,  "  and  honestly  found  human  nature  reassur- 
ing." It  was  not  in  their  Calvinistic  neighbors  that 
they  discovered  any  such  encouragement.  Dr.  Chan- 
ning  in  his  Baltimore  sermon  delivered  the  following 
opinion  of  the  Orthodox  theology  :  "  By  shocking,  as 
it  does,  the  fundamental  principles  of  morality,  and  by 
exhibiting  a  severe  and  partial  Deity,  it  tends  strongly 
to  pervert  the  moral  faculty,  to  form  a  gloomy,  for- 
bidding, and  servile  religion,  and  to  lead  men  to 
substitute  censoriousness,  bitterness,  and  persecution 
for  a  tender  and  impartial  charity."      Nearly  fifty  years 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION" 


207 


Willi A.M  Ellery  Channing  Monument,  Arlington  Street. 
Bronze  by  Herbert  Adams. 

later,  we  find  Dr.  Ellis  making  what  he  justly  calls  a 
"  frank  assertion "  :  "  We  do  not  like  the  strictly 
Orthodox  type  of  character,  certainly  not  till  it  has 
been  modified,  humanized,  and  liberalized.  We  deem 
it  harsh,  ungenial,  narrow,  repulsive,  not  winning, 
gracious,  expansive,  or  attractive.  It  is  in  our  view 
but  an  inadequate  expression  of  our  ideal  of  a  Christian 
character."  Here  are  words  as  uncompromising  as 
the  Orthodox  attitude  toward  "  plunder."     They  are 


2o8  BOSTON 

worth  recalling  if  only  as  evidences  of  the  honest  con- 
viction held  by  each  party  that  the  other  was  hope- 
lessly in  the  wrong.  Furthermore,  by  learning  where 
the  reassuring  qualities  of  human  nature  were  not 
found,  we  may  readily  infer  where  they  were. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  as  the  Boston  Unitarians  — 
say  of  the  third  decade  of  the  century  —  looked  upon 
their  clergy,  they  beheld  admirable  types  of  Christian 
gentlemen.  They  were  in  an  important  sense  leaders 
in  the  community,  men  of  that  personal  distinction 
which  is  due  both  to  breeding  and  to  scholarship,  car- 
rying names  long  identified  with  the  best  things  of 
New  England  life,  —  Channing,  Frothingham,  Palfrey, 
Lothrop,  Parkman,  Gannett,  Pierpont,  Lowell,  Ripley 
— true  representatives  of  Dr.  Holmes's  "Brahmin 
caste."  In  Josiah  Quincy's  Figures  of  the  Past  it  is  said ; 
"  On  the  topmost  round  of  the  social  ladder  stood  the 
clergy ;  for  although  the  lines  of  theological  separation 
among  themselves  were  deeply  cut,  the  void  between 
them  and  the  laity  was  even  more  impassable."  From 
the  same  source  we  learn  that  Dr.  Channing  deeply 
regretted  this  obstacle  to  familiar  intercourse,  and  envied 
those  who  could  know  men  just  as  they  are.  "  My 
profession,"  he  said,  "  requires  me  to  deal  with  such 
men  as  actually  exist,  yet  I  can  never  see  them  except 
in  disguise." 

It  was  this  very  desire  to  get  at  the  essential  man 
which  found  its  expression  in  the  Unitarian  sermons 
of  the  time.  The  ministers  are  described  as  "  absorbed 
in  the  endeavor  to  apply  Christianity  to  personal  con- 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         209 

duct,  taking  men  and  women  one  by  one  and  trusting 
to  their  influence  for  the  regeneration  of  society." 
The  preaching,  therefore,  was  strongly  ethical  rather 
than  doctrinal ;  the  dignity,  not  the  depravity,  of 
human  nature  was,  as  it  has  since  more  generally 
grown  to  be,  the  quality  which  every  listener  must 
be  taught  to  recognize  in  himself,  to  the  end  that  indi- 
vidual excellence  might  by  degrees  redeem  the  world. 
Withal,  a  supernatural  element  in  religion,  a  divine  reve- 
lation of  Christian  truth,  were  by  no  means  discarded. 
Under  such  teaching,  to  which  the  laity  really  gave 
attention,  a  definite  type  of  character  was  produced. 
It  is  described  by  Dr.  O.  B.  Frothingham  in  his  Boston 
Unitarianism,  and,  making  all  allowance  for  the  fact 
that  he  wrote  of  the  men  who  shared  most  intimately 
the  influences  of  his  own  training,  it  would  probably 
be  hard  to  frame  a  more  accurate  description:  "In 
meditating  on  the  character  of  these  men,  one  is  re- 
minded of  the  good  Samuel  Sewall.  Of  course  the 
softening  influence  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  had 
produced  its  effect.  There  was  less  reference  to  divine 
interposition,  less  literalness  in  interpreting  Scripture, 
less  bluntness,  less  superstition,  if  we  may  use  so  harsh 
a  word  in  speaking  of  that  sweet  soul.  But  there  was 
the  same  integrity,  the  same  conscientiousness,  the  same 
directness  of  dealing,  the  same  respect  for  learning,  the 
same  reverence  for  piety,  the  same  punctiliousness  of 
demeanor,  the  same  urbanity.  They  were  not  re- 
formers, or  ascetics,  or  devotees.  All  idealists  were 
visionaries  in  their  esteem.     Those  who  looked  for  a 


2IO  BOSTON 

*  kingdom  of  heaven  '  were  dreamers.  They  went  to 
church ;  they  had  family  prayers  as  a  rule,  though  by 
no  means  universally.  It  was  customary  to  say  grace 
at  meat.  They  wished  they  were  holy  enough  to  adorn 
the  communion;  they  beUeved  the  narratives  in  the 
Bible,  Old  Testament  and  New." 

That  these  nineteenth-century  Samuel  Sewalls  and 
their  spiritual  teachers  believed  they  had  attained  the 
best  and  ultimate  form  of  religion  is  perhaps  not  sur- 
prising. The  most  respectable  local  opinion  did  every- 
thing to  confirm  this  belief.  Harvard  College  and 
nearly  all  the  influences  of  wealth  and  fashion  in  Bos- 
ton were  powerful  allies  of  the  new  faith.  "  When 
Dr.  Beecher  came  to  Boston,"  wrote  his  daughter, 
Mrs.  Stowe,  "  Calvinism  or  Orthodoxy  was  the  de- 
spised and  persecuted  form  of  faith.  It  was  the 
dethroned  royal  family  wandering  like  a  permitted 
mendicant  in  the  city  where  once  it  had  held  court, 
and  Unitarianism  reigned  in  its  stead."  The  ministry 
of  Lyman  Beecher  at  the  Hanover  Street  Church, 
from  1826  to  1832,  during  the  first  half  of  which  time 
his  son  Edward  had  charge  of  the  Park  Street  Church, 
may  be  taken  to  mark  the  end  of  the  active  contro- 
versy between  the  conservatives  and  the  liberals.  The 
spirit  with  which  this  "  Philistine  Giant  "  came  out  of 
Connecticut  to  fight  for  the  old  order  is  best  expressed 
in  his  own  words :  "  It  is  here,"  he  wrote  of  Boston 
in  1826,  "that  New  England  is  to  be  regenerated,  the 
enemy  driven  out  of  the  temple  they  have  usurped 
and  polluted,  the  college  to  be  rescued,  the  public  sen- 


Park  Street  Church  about  1850. 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION" 


213 


timent  to  be  revolutionized  and  restored  to  evangelical 
tone."  It  was  a  difficult  task  he  set  himself.  "  The 
Unitarians,"  he  declared,  "  with  all  their  principles  of 
toleration,  were  as  really  a  persecuting  power  while 
they  had  the  ascendency  as  ever  existed.  Wives  and 
daughters  were  forbidden  to  attend  our  meetings  ;  and 
the  whole  weight  of  political,  literary,  and  social  in- 
fluence was  turned  against  us,  and  the  lash  of  ridicule 
laid  on  without  stint."  Against  these  obstacles  he 
labored  manfully,  with  sermons,  writings,  and  revival 
meetings.  How  terribly  vital  was  the  faith  for  which 
he  contended  one  may  realize  by  reading  the  letters 
which  passed  between  him  and  his  children  struggling 
toward  a  full  acceptance  of  that  faith.  Yet  with  all 
his  zeal  and  brilliant  gifts  it  was  beyond  his  power  to 
stem  the  tide  —  to  expel  the  enemy,  save  the  college, 
and  turn  public  sentiment  into  its  old  channels.  No 
single  man,  or  band  of  men,  could  have  accomplished 
such  results.  Even  before  he  came  to  Boston,  the 
Unitarians,  many  of  them  reluctantly,  had  set  up  the 
machinery  of  a  sect  —  a  name,  periodicals  of  their  own, 
and  a  definite  organization.  Less  than  ten  years  after 
his  departure.  Dr.  Channing  is  found  lamenting  the 
fact  that  the  denomination,  pledged  originally  to 
progress,  had  grown  stationary,  that  at  last  there  was 
a  Unitarian  Orthodoxy. 

The  discovery  that  one  set  of  opinions  is  orthodox 
and  another  not  is  never  made  till  some  new  protestant 
arises  with  his  fresh  protest.  So  the  "  Unitarian  con- 
troversy "    had    begun ;    so   the  second    controversy. 


214 


BOSTON 


this  time  within  the  denomination  itself,  was  intro- 
duced by  Emerson  and  Theodore  Parker.  In  1838 
Emerson  delivered  his  "  Divinity  School  Address  "  at 


Lyman  Beecher's  Church,  Bowdoin  Street;  now  The  Church  of 
St.  John  the  Evangelist. 

Harvard  —  a  declaration  of  individualism  which  was 
held  heretical  even  at  the  headquarters  of  heterodoxy. 
A  year  later  the  Rev.  Andrews  Norton,  the  interpreter 
of  Scripture  whose  scholarly  word  was  almost  authori- 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         215 

tative  in  the  Unitarian  body,  deplored,  in  a  discourse 
on  "  The  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,"  the  current 
tendencies  of  theological  thought.  But  Emerson  had 
already  separated  himself  from  the  Unitarian  ministry 
by  reason  of  an  imperfect  sympathy  with  his  Boston 
parishioners  regarding  the  administration  of  the  Lord's 
Supper.  He  could  speak,  therefore,  as  one  somewhat 
outside  the  fold.  Not  so  Theodore  Parker,  in  1841 
minister  of  the  First  Church  in  West  Roxbury.  In 
this  year  he  delivered  his  South  Boston  sermon  on 
the  Transient  and  Permanent  in  Christianity.  Parker 
had  been  known  hitherto  chiefly  as  the  most  practical 
and  ethical  of  preachers.  He  had  even  taken  for  his 
theme  on  one  occasion  the  duties,  temptations,  and 
trials  peculiar  to  milkmen.  In  the  South  Boston 
sermon,  fairly  entering  the  field  of  doctrinal  contro- 
versy, he  startled  all  conservative  Unitarians  by  the 
bold  declaration  that  Christianity  needed  no  support 
from  miracles,  and  that  it  could  still  stand  firm,  as  the 
absolute  religion,  even  if  it  could  be  proved  that  its 
founder  had  never  lived. 

The  disestablishment  of  the  Puritan  Church  in 
Boston  was,  of  course,  a  thing  of  the  past  at  the  time 
of  Theodore  Parker's  South  Boston  sermon.  Yet  the 
treatment  his  radicalism  received  presents  so  close  a 
parallel  to  the  effects  of  the  original  dissent  from  Calvin- 
ism as  to  afford  a  significant  sequel  to  the  earlier  story. 
Indeed,  the  very  phrases  of  the  outcry  of  twenty  and 
thirty  years  before  repeat  themselves.  Channing 
doubted  whether  Parker  could  even  be  called  a  Chris- 


2i6  BOSTON 

tian.  "  Without  miracles/'  he  declared,  "  the  historical 
Christ  is  gone."  From  Dr.  Frothingham  came  the 
complaint :  "The  difference  between  Trinitarians  and 
Unitarians  is  a  difference  in  Christianity ;  the  dif- 
ference between  Mr.  Parker  and  the  Association  [of 
Unitarian  ministers]  is  a  difference  between  no  Chris- 
tianity and  Christianity."  A  Unitarian  layman  wrote 
to  a  secular  paper :  "  I  would  rather  see  every  Unita- 
rian congregation  in  our  land  dissolved, and  every  one  of 
our  churches  occupied  by  other  denominations  or  razed 
to  the  ground,  than  to  assist  in  placing  a  man  entertain- 
ing the  sentiments  of  Theodore  Parker  in  one  of  our 
pulpits."  The  Orthodox  looked  on,  no  doubt  with  a 
certain  natural  satisfaction,  and  asked,  "What  could 
you  expect  ? "  Some  of  his  fellow-ministers  raised 
the  question  of  expelling  Parker  from  their  local  Asso- 
ciation. This  was  not  carried,  but,  forced  to  recognize 
the  strong  feeling  in  the  Association  that  he  should 
withdraw,  Parker  absented  himself  from  the  meetings. 
Meanwhile  the  old  familiar  method  of  "  denying  Chris- 
tian fellowship,"  and  refusing  pulpit  exchanges,  came 
into  play,  and  Parker  found  himself  standing  practi- 
cally alone.  When  James  Freeman  Clarke  showed  the 
independence  to  exchange  pulpits  with  him,  it  was  with 
the  result  that  fifteen  of  his  most  powerful  parishion- 
ers, with  their  families,  joined  themselves  to  another 
church. 

The  Orthodox  question,  "  What  could  you  expect?  " 
had  more  reason  behind  it  than  the  conservative 
Unitarians,  in  the  security  of  what  they  believed  an 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION" 


217 


ultimate  faith,  would  have  been  willing  to  admit. 
Theodore  Parker,  with  his  indifference  to  all  bonds  of 
tradition  and  his  inability  to  hold  a  strong  belief  with- 
out uttering  it,  needed  only  the  atmosphere  in  which 
he  lived  to  make  him  just 
what  he  was.  The  same 
condition  which  made  him, 
in  the  telling  local  phrase, 
a  "  come-outer,"  had  pre- 
pared a  very  considerable 
body  of  "  come-outers," 
eager  to  hear  and  follow 
him.  If  the  Unitarian 
movement  in  Boston  stood 
for  any  one  thing  above 
all  others,  it  was  for  lib- 
erty of  thought  and  speech, 
the  "  dissidence  of  dis- 
sent "  carried  over  from 
the  time  of  Burke  into  the 
nineteenth  century.  So  it 
was  that  Theodore  Parker 
was  an  entirely  characteristic  local  figure,  adding  free- 
dom of  political  thought,  when  the  slavery  question 
became  paramount,  to  his  freedom  of  religious  discus- 
sion. So  it  was  that  the  independent  Sunday  services 
which  he  held  in  Music  Hall  filled  an  important  place 
in  the  lives  of  the  large  radical  following  drawn  by  his 
fervid  personality  to  desert  the  orthodox  Unitarianism. 
Heretic   of  heretics  as  he  was  in  his  day,  his   latest 


0 


Theodore  Parker. 

Bust  by  W.  W.  Story,  in  the  Boston 
Public  Library. 


2i8  BOSTON 

biographer,  the  Rev.  John  White  Chadwick,  who  may 
be  held  to  speak  as  authoritatively  as  any  individual 
may  for  his  denomination,  declares :  "  From  then  till 
now  Unitarian  progress  has  been  along  the  line  illumi- 
nated by  his  beacon-light." 

To  follow  that  line  would  be  to  depart  far  from  the 
central  theme  of  this  chapter,  —  the  disestablishment 
of  the  Puritan  church.  A  full  treatment  of  that 
theme  alone  would  demand  a  volume.  Here  it  has 
seemed  sufficient  to  point  out  some  of  its  mdst  signifi- 
cant facts  and  aspects.  They  belong  peculiarly  to 
Boston  history.  The  whole  Unitarian  movement,  in 
its  outward  manifestations,  has  meant  much  more  to 
Boston  than  to  any  other  community,  in  America  or 
elsewhere.  With  Boston  must  be  reckoned  also  the 
eastern  part  of  Massachusetts  :  much  that  has  been 
said  about  the  disestablishment  applies  to  the  sur- 
rounding towns  quite  as  much  as  to  the  city  itself.  In 
the  remote  parts  of  Massachusetts,  as  in  the  country 
at  large,  the  movement,  judged  by  outward  results, 
has  gone  on  rather  as  an  eddy  by  the  side  of  the  stream 
than  as  the  main  action  of  the  tide. 

The  "  Unitarian  controversy "  itself  is  now  far 
enough  in  the  past  for  men  to  ask  and  answer  the 
question,  which  party  won  ?  If  to  win  means  to  per- 
suade your  antagonist  that  he  is  wrong,  then  we  must 
call  it  a  drawn  battle,  for  it  is  certain  that  those  who 
argued  for  and  against  the  Calvinistic  faith  ended 
practically  where  they  began.  The  very  process  of 
argument  served  to  strengthen  their  convictions.     If 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         219 

Channing  could  have  had  his  way,  to  let  the  liberal 
leaven  work  within  the  established  fold,  we  may  well 
imagine  that  there  never  would  have  been  that  stiffen- 
ing of  Orthodoxy  which  only  in  recent  years  has  begun 
to  relax.  How  far,  on  the  other  hand,  the  progress 
of  liberalism  would  have  been  checked,  no  man  can 
say. 

If  victory  or  defeat  is  to  be  measured  by  denomina- 
tional growth  —  a  development  which  had  only  a  sec- 
ondary interest  for  those  who  formed  the  Unitarian 
denomination  —  our  later  view  must  differ  from  that 
which  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century  would  have 
presented.  In  1850  there  were  within  the  limits  of 
what  is  now  Boston,  thirty-two  Unitarian  churches ; 
there  are  now  (1903)  twenty-seven.  In  1850  there 
were  within  the  same  limits  twenty-one  Congregational 
Trinitarian  churches  ;  to-day  there  are  thirty-three. 
The  rapid  growth  of  the  Episcopal  and  other  Trinitarian 
Protestant  churches  might  also  fairly  be  added  to  the 
reckoning.  Thus  it  appears  that  the  Unitarian  body 
was  no  richer  in  the  seeds  of  outward  growth  than  its 
opponents  and  some  of  its  friends  predicted. 

But  these  are  all  external  and  arbitrary  methods  of 
counting  success  or  failure.  Mrs.  Stowe  herself  sug- 
gested a  truer  way  of  regarding  the  matter  when  she 
wrote  :  "  This  party,  called  for  convenience  Unitarian, 
was,  in  fact,  a  whole  generation  in  the  process  of  reac- 
tion." The  process  has  been  one  in  which  all  Protes- 
tant denominations  have,  in  greater  and  less  degree, 
shared.      From  the  Unitarians  few  will  now  withhold 


220  BOSTON 

the  credit  of  framing  the  concrete  form  in  which  this 
influence  has  made  itself  most  effectively  felt.  Their 
early  claim  that  Calvinism  soon  showed  signs  of  modi- 
fying itself  was  duly  resented  by  the  Orthodox.  In 
the  commemorative  discourse  at  the  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  the  Andover  Seminary  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon,  looking 
back  upon  the  divisions  which  had  rent  the  church, 
expressed  pity  for  the  comfort  the  Unitarians  took  in 
the  changes  of  Calvinistic  belief:  "  Orthodoxy,  they 
say,  has  become  liberal  and  has  renounced  the  horrid 
dogmas  which  it  was  charged  with  holding ;  and  there- 
fore Unitarianism  may  be  regarded  as  having  accom- 
plished its  mission.  Well,  if  they  are  satisfied  with 
this  result,  let  us  be  thankful  for  them  that  they  are  so 
easily  satisfied.  ...  If  now  at  last  our  Unitarian 
friends  have  really  learned,  to  their  own  satisfaction, 
that  the  New  England  Orthodoxy  does  not  hold  the 
obnoxious  and  oft  repudiated  dogmas  which  they  have 
so  long  imputed  to  it,  we  may  thankfully  accept  the 
fact  as  one  more  proof  that  the  world  moves."  It  is 
in  quite  a  different  spirit  that  the  present  minister  of 
the  New  Old  South  speaks,  nearly  fifty  years  later,  of 
"  the  vast  service  that  Unitarianism  has  rendered  to 
the  Christian  belief  of  the  century  "  ;  and  he  writes  : 
"  This  overdone  sense  of  depravity,  hardened  into 
dogma,  stood  for  centuries  against  the  truth  that  the 
morality  of  God  in  Christ  is  the  morality  for  mankind. 
The  truth  has  at  last  prevailed,  and  at  this  point  of 
belief  Christian  people  everywhere  are  under  an  im- 
mense debt  to  the  great  Unitarian  leaders."     It  is  in 


"THE    BOSTON    RELIGION"         221 

admissions^  or  rather  hearty  acknowledgments,  of  this 
sort,  that  the  true  outcome  of  the  Unitarian  contro- 
versy may  be  said  to  He.  And  to  those  who  are  glad 
to  associate  Boston  with  the  progress  of  mankind, 
there  is  satisfaction  in  the  thought  that  these  great 
Unitarian  leaders  were  eminently  the  product  of  local 
conditions. 


VIII 


THE    "  LITERARY    CENTRE 


TheWic{ed  mans  Portion. 


A  SERMON 

rPteached  at  the  lt^«re  in  Beflctt  m  Kta  Engtind  the 

»8th     diyofthe  1  Moneih   i674.wlitnt»oraeo 

were  ixk""^,  ^^o  ^■'^  aunhind 

iheit  Mailer.} 

Wherein  is  (hewed 

Thatexcefetnxsk^edtiefi  doth  hr'm% 
mt'mely  Death. 

Z^  INCREASE    M4THEX,7acha 
of  a  Church  of  Chrift. 


Prov.  10. 17.  Tie  fttr  tfihe  Itri  frtlnntth  dsjii,  hi  thi  jttn 
iflhi  wuksifitUhtlhirttiid. 

Epb.6.i,  J.  HstunTiif  Failitr  ai  ity  M ilitr  (which  u  th fi-fi 
CcmmtJidmtnl  -mili  frcmlfi)  tktl  it  nay  tl  wit  vith  tin, 
tndlhtttii/jl  livllvS  cnlblEtrlh. 

Pana  ad  piucos,  mttus  ad  omnes. 


OUOTATION  marks 
are  safe  enclosures 
for  words  in  danger  of 
losing  their  pl^ce.  The 
words  at  the  head  of  this 
chapter  have  been  dragged 
relentlessly  from  one 
American  city  to  another, 
and  have  before  them  a 
prospect  of  endless  migra- 
tion. Their  meaning,  too, 
is  subject  to  indefinite 
change.  The  centre  may 
be  that  of  the  writing, 
the  printing,  or  the  read- 
ing of  books.  A  cour- 
ageous confidence  is  needed  to  say  that  this,  that,  or 
the  other  place  is  or  will  be  the  "  literary  centre  of 
America."  It  is  the  fortune  of  the  present  writer  to 
be  dealing  with  what  has  been,  and  the  assertion  that 
Boston  was  the  literary  centre  —  without  quotation 
marks  —  during  the  period  in  which  American  litera- 
ture acquired  a  shelf  of  its  own  in  the  library  of  the 
race  is  hardly  open  to  dispute.     The  production  of 

222 


S  0  S  TO  N^ 

Printed  by  7«1»  Fcfln.     i  6  7  J  . 


Title-page  of  the  First  Book 
PRINTED  IN  Boston. 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE"         223 

books  possessing  something  like  permanence  is  perhaps 
the  most  characteristic  mark  of  a  centre  to  which  the 
term  literary ^  in  its  true  meaning  of  "  related  to  litera- 
ture," may  be  applied.  Name  the  American  writers 
whose  work  has  stood  the  test  of  half  a  century,  and 
with  a  few  notable  exceptions  they  belong  to  Boston 
and  its  neighborhood.  All  this  is  thrice  familiar.  The 
record  of  it,  in  outline  or  detail,  is  a  story  which  has 
been  told  by  many  tongues  and  many  pens.  If  we 
look  rather  at  the  significance  of  the  story,  and  try  to 
give  it  its  place  in  the  longer  story  of  Boston,  the  more 
immediate  purpose  will  be  served. 

Amongst  the  many  fields  of  activity  into  which  Bos- 
ton has  made  an  early  or  the  earliest  entry,  the  field 
of  creative  writing  —  not  for  instruction  or  argument 
—  can  hardly  be  counted.  It  is  to  other  places  that 
we  must  look  for  the  first  important  contributions  to 
what  is  called  American  literature.  Yet  in  Phila- 
delphia and  New  York  the  first-comers,  Charles 
Brockden  Brown,  Irving,  and  Cooper,  each  enjoyed 
some  of  the  distinction  of  the  sohtary.  Brown  has 
become  a  mere  name  in  literary  history ;  the  others 
live.  But  when  they  made  their  appearance,  it  was 
rather  as  detached  luminaries  than  as  planets  or  fixed 
stars  belonging  to  a  system.  The  life  of  the  commu- 
nities in  which  they  lived  had  not  reached  the  organic 
state  demanding  expression  in  literature,  and  finding 
it  through  the  medium  of  a  body,  however  small,  which 
could  be  called  a  literary  class.  In  Boston  at  this  early 
period  the  condition  was  much  the  same,  with  the  two 


224 


BOSTON 


differences  that  the  individual  writers  of  distinction 
were  yet  to  appear,  and  that  influences  were  at  work, 
perhaps  more  powerfully  than  anywhere  else  in 
America,  toward  making  a  definite  expression  through 
literature  at  some  later  time  almost  a  necessity.  We 
have  seen  how  these  influences  called  into  being  the 
Anthology  Club,  the  Athenaeum,  and  the  North  Ameri- 
can Review.     The  unremitting  influence  of  Harvard 


BpMBSK 


In  possession  of  the  Boston  Public  Library. 

College,  sending  its  sons  year  by  year  into  the  pulpit, 
the  counting-houses,  and  professional  offices  of  Boston, 
has  also  been  touched  upon.  For  the  devotion  of 
any  considerable  number  of  these  or  other  men  to  the 
pursuit  of  literature,  the  time  was  not  yet  ripe.  Ques- 
tions of  politics  laid  claim  to  much  of  the  best  thought 
of  the  best  thinkers.  As  before  the  Revolution,  so 
in  the  active  days  of  the  Federalist  party,  the  news- 
paper press  abounded  in  contributions,  frequently  over 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE"         225 

classic  pseudonyms,  from  the  ablest  men  in  the  com- 
munity. Thus  the  place  which  the  Federalist ^  farther 
south,  won  for  itself  in  the  early  literature  of  the  coun- 
try was  not  wholly  without  its  counterpart  in  the  cur- 
rent productions  of  Boston  writers.  It  was  a  Boston 
editor,  by  the  way,  who  is  said  to  have  coined  the 
phrase,  "  the  era  of  good  feeling,"  adopted  with  una- 
nimity by  historians  of  the  United  States.  The  influ- 
ences of  journalistic  writing,  however,  being  those 
which  Boston  shared  with  her  sister  towns,  are  not  of 
present  concern. 

Mr.  Howells  has  spoken  of  the  "  Augustan  age  " 
of  literature  in  Boston  as  "  the  Unitarian  harvest-time 
of  the  old  Puritanic  seed-time."  It  is  a  good  defini- 
tion ;  but  in  the  seed-time  should  surely  be  included 
the  earlier  years  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when  Uni- 
tarianism  was  making  its  way.  One  who  reads  not 
only  a  chapter  on  the  "  Unitarian  controversy,"  but 
also  the  writings  of  the  leaders  in  the  new  movement, 
cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  with  the  mere  Hterary  skill 
of  these  writers.  Besides  having  ideas  which  they 
wished  to  urge,  they  knew  how  to  urge  them.  Their 
grace  and  cogency  of  style  implied  both  an  effective 
training  in  the  use  of  the  writer's  tools  and  the  exist- 
ence of  an  audience  capable  of  appreciating  such  use. 
Butterflies  are  not  deliberately  brought  to  a  wheel  for 
breaking.  The  very  nature  of  a  controversy  which 
meant  so  much  to  so  large  a  portion  of  the  community 
bespoke  the  presence  of  a  class  to  which  the  things  of 
the   mind  and  the  spirit  were  of  high  importance  — 

Q 


226  BOSTON 

a  class  from  which  the  evolution  of  a  smaller  "  literary 
class  "  was  easily  possible. 

Of  the  rise  of  the  Transcendental  movement  the 
Unitarian  body  as  such  would  have  held  itself  inno- 
cent. A  shrewd  observer  of  the  intellectual  life  of 
Boston,  the  Rev.  Dr.  O.  B.  Frothingham,  once  wrote 
of  the  place :  "  It  was  always  remarkable  for  explo- 
sions of  mind."  By  the  conservative  element  Tran- 
scendentalism was  frankly  regarded  as  one  of  these 
explosions.  Of  its  practical  value  as  a  moral  agency, 
Father  Taylor,  the  Methodist  missionary  to  sailors, 
probably  spoke  for  many  of  his  contemporaries  when 
he  said  of  a  Transcendental  discourse  he  had  just 
heard  :  "  It  would  take  as  many  sermons  like  that  to 
convert  a  human  soul  as  it  would  quarts  of  skimmed 
milk  to  make  a  man  drunk."  In  looking  back  upon 
TranscendentaHsm,  however,  and  upon  the  influences 
surrounding  its  birth,  the  spirit  which  animated  the 
Unitarian  movement,  if  not  Unitarianism  itself,  stands 
forth  conspicuous.  As  the  later  religious  thought  of 
Theodore  Parker  carried  to  its  conclusion  one  ten- 
dency of  Unitarian  thinking,  so  the  philosophic 
thought  of  Transcendentalism  seized  upon  and  car- 
ried out  another.  The  dropping  of  many  traditions 
was  the  best  preparation  for  that  omitting  of  all  tradi- 
tions from  the  mind,  which  Emerson  considered  the 
essence  of  the  new  philosophy. 

To  the  local  causes  must  be  added  those  French  and 
German  influences  which  led  to  the  suggestive  saying 
that    Transcendentalism    was    "  imported    in    foreign 


THE   "LITERARY    CENTRE"        227 

packages."  The  very  origin  of  its  name,  as  used  in 
Boston,  seems  to  be  unknown.  For  its  meaning 
George  Ripley,  about  to  superintend  the  experiment 
of  Brook  Farm,  spoke  clearly  in  the  summer  which 
ended  his  ministry  at  the  Unitarian  church  in  Pur- 
chase Street :  "  There  is  a  class  of  persons  who  desire 
a  reform  in  the  prevailing  philosophy  of  the  day. 
These  are  called  Transcendentalists,  because  they 
beheve  in  an  order  of  truths  which  transcend  the 
sphere  of  the  human  senses.  Their  leading  idea  is 
the  supremacy  of  mind  over  matter.  Hence  they 
maintain  that  the  truth  of  religion  does  not  depend  on 
tradition  nor  historical  facts  but  has  an  unerring  wit- 
ness in  the  soul."  A  less  restrained  utterance  of  the 
same  philosophy  is  made  by  Alcott  in  one  of  his 
"  Orphic  Sayings,"  in  the  first  number  of  the  Tran- 
scendental Dial :  "  Believe,  youth,  that  your  heart  is 
an  oracle ;  trust  her  instinctive  auguries,  obey  her 
divine  leadings ;  nor  listen  too  fondly  to  the  uncertain 
echoes  of  your  head."  In  words  no  less  characteristic 
of  Emerson  than  the  fragment  just  quoted  is  of  Alcott, 
the  magazine  is  introduced  to  the  world  :  "  Let  it  be 
such  a  Dial,  not  as  the  dead  face  of  a  clock,  hardly 
even  such  as  the  Gnomon  in  a  garden,  but  rather  such 
a  Dial  as  is  the  Garden  itself,  in  whose  leaves  and 
flowers  and  fruit  the  suddenly  awakened  sleeper  is  in- 
stantly apprised  not  what  part  of  dead  time,  but  what 
state  of  life  and  growth  is  now  arrived  and  arriving.'* 
These  passages,  taken  together,  will  suffice  to  sug- 
gest the  aims  of  Transcendentalism.     It  is  not  needed 


228  BOSTON 

here  to  trace  the  rise  and  fall  of  Brook  Farm  (i  841-7), 
the  application  of  Transcendental  philosophy  to  the 
problem  of  living  ;  or  of  the  Dial  (1840-4),  the  chief 
organic  expression  of  the  movement.  All  that  has 
been  abundantly  done  elsewhere.  What  is  more  use- 
ful at  this  point,  in  regarding  Transcendentalism  as  an 
influence,  is  to  bear  in  mind  the  marked  youthfulness 
of  many  of  its  followers.  Before  the  Dial  appeared 
Emerson  commended  it  to  Carlyle  for  what  it  would 
show  him  about  "  our  young  people."  Again  he 
tells '  Carlyle  that  it  is  "  a  fact  for  literary  history  that 
all  the  bright  boys  and  girls  in  New  England,  quite 
ignorant  of  each  other,  take  the  world  so  "  —  that  is  as 
the  Transcendentalists  take  it.  When  the  Dial  ceased 
to  mark  the  time,  and  Brook  Farm  was  approaching 
dissolution,  the  Harbinger,  of  which  the  first  number 
was  published  in  June  of  1845,  joined  the  voices  of 
Transcendentalism  in  a  farewell  chorus.  Of  the  chief 
contributors  to  this  number  George  Ripley,  the  dean 
in  years  and  service,  was  forty-three  years  old.  Horace 
Greeley  and  Cranch  were  respectively  thirty-four  and 
thirty-two.  Parke  Godwin  was  twenty-nine ;  Lowell, 
Story,  and  Charles  A.  Dana  were  each  twenty-six ; 
T.  W.  Higginson  was  twenty-two,  and  George  William 
Curtis  twenty-one.  Because  the  entire  movement  of 
Transcendentalism  was  so  largely  a  movement  of  youth 
it  mattered  less  that,  as  an  outward  expression  of 
thought  and  feeling,  it  came  to  a  definite  end.  Its 
influence  was  stamped  indelibly  on  many  minds, 
which  in  their  growth  would  naturally  outgrow  "  ideal^ 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE"         229 

ism  as  it  appeared  in  1842,"  —  to  use  Emerson's  defi- 
nition of  the  philosophy,  —  but  must  carry  its  effects 
through  Hfe  and  spread  its  influence  in  many  broaden- 
ing circles.  Those  who  acknowledge  the  greatest 
debt  to  it  recognize  its  influence  not  only  in  literature, 
but  in  art,  religion,  politics,  equalization  of  the  sexes, 
and  every  forward  movement  of  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century.  In  spite  of  its  follies  and  extrav- 
agances, few  will  deny  its  general  service  as  a  stimu- 
lus to  clear  thinking  and  pure  living,  and  therein  as  an 
educational  force  felt  directly  and  indirectly  through- 
out the  community  in  which  it  throve. 

Of  all  the  representatives  of  Transcendentalism, 
Emerson  was  naturally  felt  to  be  the  most  important, 
and  of  course  has  exerted  the  most  enduring  personal 
influence.  What  saved  him  from  complete  identifica- 
tion with  the  movement  was  his  pervading  sanity  and 
humor.  Loyal  friend  of  his  Orphic  neighbor  as  he 
was,  he  could  yet  record  with  a  certain  relish  the 
remark  of  one  puzzled  auditor  of  a  "  Conversation  " 
by  Alcott :  "  It  seemed  to  him  like  going  to  heaven 
in  a  swing.'*  It  was  he  also  who  made  what  is  prob- 
ably the  most  familiar  definition  of  Brook  Farm,  —  "a 
perpetual  picnic,  a  French  Revolution  in  small,  an  Age 
of  Reason  in  a  patty-pan."  To  Ripley,  when  Brook 
Farm  was  only  a  plan,  he  could  write,  "  If  not  the 
sunrise,  it  will  be  the  morning  star."  But  when  Ripley 
sought  definitely  to  secure  his  participation  in  the  ven- 
ture, his  sound  common  sense  prompted  the  answer : 
"  My  feeling  is  that  the  community  is  not  good  for 


230  BOSTON 

me,  that  it  has  little  to  offer  me  which  with  resolution 
I  cannot  procure  for  myself.  ...  It  seems  to  me  a 
circuitous  and  operose  way  of  relieving  myself  to  put 
upon  your  community  the  emancipation  which  I  ought 
to  take  on  myself  I  must  assume  my  own  vows." 
The  same  spirit  of  practical  conservatism  made  him  a 
late  comer  amongst  the  active  opponents  of  slavery. 
It  also  marked  his  point  of  contact  with  the  element 
of  intellectual  and  social  life  in  Boston  from  which  the 
chief  recruits  to  the  ranks  of  literature  were  drawn. 

It  may  fairly  be  questioned  whether  the  poets,  his- 
torians, and  other  writers  of  any  place  besides  Boston, 
through  a  whole  period  of  marked  productiveness, 
have  represented  so  clearly  as  the  writers  of  Boston  for 
the  second  third  of  the  nineteenth  century,  whatever 
was  best  in  the  inheritances  and  current  life  of  the 
place.  Grub  Street  and  Bohemia,  often  merging  into 
the  territory  of  newspapers  and  publishing  offices, 
have  elsewhere  been  a  fruitful  source  of  authorship. 
It  is  an  alien  criticism  of  Boston  that  there  "  Respecta- 
bility stalks  unchecked."  The  justice  of  the  charge  is 
certainly  supported  by  a  mere  list  of  the  writers  who 
brought  distinction  to  their  town  —  a  list  in  which 
Bohemia  might  expect  to  be  represented  if  at  all.  The 
fact  is  that  this  undefined  country,  to  which  all  true 
inheritors  of  the  tavern  spirit  of  Ben  Jonson  and  his 
fellows  have  owed  allegiance,  has  never  had  any  im- 
portant place  within  the  boundaries  of  New  England. 
The  background  of  the  Boston  writers  was  eminently 
that  of  the  circle   described  in  the   privately  printed 


THE   "LITERARY    CENTRE"        231 

volume  From  Books  and  Papers  of  Russell  Sturgis:  "In 
the  first  place,  then,  Boston  society  was  exclusive,  as 
by  a  law  of  nature ;  it  was  the  simple  coming  together 
of  certain  families,  the  younger  men  and  women  to 
dance  or  talk,  the  elder  to  talk  or  dine.  It  was  like  a 
large  family  party  ;  and  there  were  many  who  could 
announce  the  precise  degree  of  relationship  between 
any  two  people  in  any  assembly."  This  was  the  Bos- 
ton of  the  generation  born  near  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  —  a  generation  which  Mr.  Julian 
Sturgis,  writing  the  words  just  quoted,  considered 
"  exceptionally  fortunate  in  the  time  of  their  birth." 
Of  a  slightly  earlier  time  he  writes  :  "  Young  Copley 
(afterwards  Lord  Lyndhurst),  revisiting  his  native 
town  in  1796  wrote  home  to  his  sister:  '  Shall  I  whis- 
per a  word  in  your  ear  ?  The  better  people  are  all 
aristocrats.  My  father  is  too  rank  a  Jacobin  to  live 
among  them.'  Indeed,  it  must  be  confessed  that  the 
idea  of  equality  in  social  matters  had  not  even  occurred 
to  any  one ;  and  that  even  in  the  political  world  it  was 
held  a  matter  of  course  that  an  Adams  or  an  Otis 
should  exercise  an  influence  other  and  far  greater  than 
that  of  one  mere  voter."  Into  a  society  maintaining 
these  views  and  standards  for  the  better  part  of  a  cen- 
tury the  chief  writers  of  Boston  were  born.  It  is  worth 
while,  then,  to  look  at  some  of  them  in  their  relation 
to  the  life  of  which  as  men  they  formed  a  part. 

The  name  of  George  Ticknor  is  not  one  of  the  first 
which  come  to  mind  in  thinking  of  the  Boston  writers. 
Yet  the   very  length  of  his  life  (1791-1871)  and  its 


232 


BOSTON 


The  Ticknor  House,  1903;  Corner  of  Beacon  and  Park  streets. 

constant  identification  with  learning  and  with  people, 
render  him  a  typical  figure.  It  is  not  chiefly  as  the 
predecessor  of  Longfellow  in  the  Smith  professorship 
at  Harvard  or  as  the  accomplished  historian  of  Spanish 
literature  that  this  figure  presents  itself.  We  think  of 
him  rather  as  the  master  of  the  hospitable  mansion  at 
the  head  of  Park  Street,  now  given  over  to  a  score  of 
trades  and  arts.  Here,  overlooking  the  Common, 
was  his  study,  rich  in  the  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
treasures  now  preserved  in  the  Boston  Pubhc  Library, 
toward  the  firm  establishment  of  which  he  became 
one  of  the  most  zealous  workers.  To  the  Art  Mu- 
seum has  descended  from  the  walls  of  this  scholar's 


THE   ^'LITERARY   CENTRE 


^33 


library,  the  portrait  of  Scott  for  which  at  Ticknor's 
request  after  a  visit  to  Abbotsford  Sir  Walter  sat  to 
Leslie.  The  picture  is  a  tangible  expression  of  that 
familiarity  with  the  most  interesting  persons  and  places 
of  Europe  which  was  characteristic  of  Ticknor  and  his 
immediate  circle.  His  Life  abounds  in  the  records  of 
friendship  with  travelHng  and  home-keeping  foreigners 
of  the  first  distinction.  On  reading  Ticknor's  Memoirs 
Edwin  P.  Whipple  complained  that  the  names  of  such 
men  as  Emerson,  Whit- 
tier,  Theodore  Parker, 
and  Sumner  were  notice- 
ably absent  from  the  pages 
of  the  book.  "  It  was 
not  to  be  supposed,"  said 
Whipple,  "  that  Mr. 
Ticknor  could,  as  a  man 
of  eminent  respectability, 
have  any  sympathy  with 
their  audacities  of  thought 
and  conduct."  Even 
Longfellow,  Holmes,  and 
Lowell  do  not,  in  the 
critic's  view,  receive  their 
just  share  of  attention  in 
comparison  with  "  some 
titled  European  medioc- 
rities." Another  passage  from  Whipple's  pages  on 
Ticknor  is  suggestive  :  "  His  position  (after  his  return 
from  Europe  in  1838)  was  so  assured  that  one  of  his 


House  of  Charles  Sumner, 
Hancock  Street. 


234  BOSTON 

friends,  Nathan  Hale,  pleasantly  suggested  that  the 
name  of  Boston  be  changed  into  Ticknorville.  In 
New  York  and  other  cities  the  good  society  of  Boston 
was  for  a  long  time  regarded  as  the  select  circle  of 
cultivated  gentlemen  and  ladies  in  which  Ticknor 
moved,  and  to  which  he  almost  gave  the  law."  It  is 
in  the  blending  of  the  man  of  the  world,  a  positive 
social  force,  and  the  man  of  letters,  not  a  mere  dilettante 
but  an  industrious  scholar,  that  Ticknor  takes  his  place 
as  a  representative  figure  in  the  life  of  Bostorr. 

To  the  hand  of  Ticknor  naturally  fell  the  biography 
of  his  friend  and  neighbor,  William  Hickling  Prescott. 
It  is  a  book  reflecting  the  same  life  of  "  eminent 
respectability."  On  the  westward  slope  of  Beacon 
Street,  also  overlooking  the  Common,  the  house  of 
Prescott,  a  structure  of  marked  dignity  and  beauty, 
stands  to  typify,  as  architecture  may,  the  quality  of 
past  generations  of  builders  and  occupants.  From 
Prescott's  Life  one  bears  away  the  impression  of  some- 
thing more  than  agreeable  surroundings  and  distin- 
guished achievement.  President  Walker  of  Harvard, 
a  classmate  of  Prescott,  wrote  of  him,  "  I  have  never 
known  one  so  little  changed  by  the  conventionalities 
of  society  and  the  hard  trial  of  success  and  prosperity." 
This  is  indeed  a  trial  of  character.  In  meeting  it  and 
at  the  same  time  overcoming  the  handicap  of  practical 
bhndness,  Prescott  put  his  inheritances  of  courage  to  a 
victorious  test.  So  it  is  that  his  Life  makes  its  strong- 
est impression  as  a  record  of  heroic  struggle,  a  docu- 
ment in   evidence   of  the  sterner  qualities  sometimes 


THE  "LITERARY   CENTRE" 


^3S 


transmitted  with  other  gifts  of  fortune  by  the  fathers 
of  New  England  to  their  sons. 

If  these  quaHties  were  characteristic  of  the  class  to 
which  the  Boston  writers  belonged,  so  also  were  the 
inherent  qualities  of 
the  gentleman.  Of 
the  generous  sacri- 
fices of  scholarship 
Prescott  both  re- 
ceived and  gave. 
When  Irving  found 
that  the  young  writer 
was  at  work  on  the 
theme  which  he  him- 
self had  made  ex- 
tensive preparations 
to  treat  —  the  Con- 
quest of  Mexico  — 
he  withdrew,  and, 
besides  leaving  the 
field  to  Prescott,  did 
everything  possible 
to  forward  his  labor 
in  it.  The  example  set  by  Irving  was  not  wasted  upon 
one  with  instincts  like  his  own.  After  the  failure  of 
Motley's  venture  in  fiction,  he  came  to  Prescott  for 
advice  about  the  work  he  was  planning  to  do  in  the 
history  of  the  Dutch  Republic.  Prescott's  studies  in 
Spanish  history  had  prepared  him  for  the  same  task 
which,  unknown  to  Motley,  he  was  about  to  undertake. 


House  of  W.  H.  Prescott  (in  fore- 
ground), Beacon  Street. 


236  BOSTON 

Instead  of  going  on  with  it,  he  placed  his  precious 
Hbrary  at  Motley's  disposal,  and,  but  for  the  dissuading 
voice  of  Ticknor,  would  have  done  the  superfluous 
kindness  of  offering  Motley  the  manuscript  collections 
of  which  he  afterward  made  use  in  his  own  Philip  the 
Second.  Hawthorne's  making  over  of  the  Acadian 
theme  to  Longfellow  is  another  of  the  instances  of 
generosity  which  are  useful  reminders  of  what  it  was 
—  and  is  —  to  be  both  a  gentleman  and  an  author. 

Of  Motley,  another  favored  son  of  the  place,  with 
brilliant  personal  gifts  rarely  qualifying  him  for  the 
high  diplomatic  posts  he  was  called  to  fill ;  of  Park- 
man,  his  junior,  whose  disabilities  of  eyesight  at  once 
restricted  his  intercourse  with  the  world  and  demanded 
of  his  own  life  a  strain  of  heroism  as  genuine  as  any 
his  pen  recorded  of  others ;  of  nearly  all  the  company 
of  Boston  writers,  —  a  detailed  account  would  present 
an  inevitable  monotony  of  background.  In  the  matter 
of  early  influences,  Longfellow  stood  somewhat  apart 
from  the  rest,  for  Portland  and  Bowdoin  College  took 
the  more  famihar  places  of  Boston  and  Harvard.  But 
then  came  the  period  of  study  and  travel  in  Europe, 
for  which  Everett  and  Bancroft  had  set  an  example 
increasingly  followed,  —  and  after  that  Longfellow, 
though  living  in  Cambridge,  became,  especially  when 
his  second  marriage  allied  him  closely  to  Boston  so- 
ciety, an  habitual  figure  therein.  His  journals  tell  the 
story  of  this  constant  intercourse  with  the  best  repre- 
sentatives of  fashionable  life  in  the  little  Boston  world, 
at  dinners,  at  Nahant,  —  to  which  his  witty  brother-in- 


THE    "LITERARY    CENTRE"        237 

law,  T.  G.  Appleton,  gave  the  enduring  name  of  "  cold  ' 
roast  Boston,"  —  even  at  the  dancing  assemblies  in 
the  hall  of  the  Papantis,  deserted  only  in  recent  years 
by  the  arbiters  of  local  fashion.  In  his  own  historic 
house  at  Cambridge  he  enjoyed  to  the  full  the  pleas- 
ures of  hospitahty  ;  and  the  frequent  entries  of  the 
names  of  guests,  native  and  foreign,  produce  a  pano- 
rama of  uncommon  variety  and  interest.  The  benig- 
nant light  which  Longfellow's  personality  threw  upon 
all  his  surroundings  is  reflected  in  nearly  everything 
that  has  been  written  about  him.  The  personality 
and  the  work  he  did  are  so  in  harmony  that  W.  J. 
Stillman's  definition  of  his  nature,  as  "  the  most  ex-  * 
quisitely  refined  and  gentle "  he  ever  knew,  brings 
to  mind  the  double  picture  of  the  man  and  his  writings 
—  characteristic,  the  one  and  the  other,  of  "the 
'  World '    of  there   and  then." 

Of  all  the  group  of  Boston  writers  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  stands  obviously  possessed  of  the  strongest 
local  flavor.  The  manifestations  of  it  in  his  prose  and 
verse  are  too  many  and  too  famiHar  to  require  any 
fresh  recital.  The  reader  who  needs  reminding  may 
well  turn,  for  a  single  significant  instance,  to  the  char- 
acter of  "  Little  Boston  "  in  The  Professor  at  the  Break- 
fast Table.  His  thoughts  and  words  could  have  been 
put  on  paper  only  by  one  who  was  saturated  with  the 
local  spirit  and  traditions.  It  is  good  to  hear  the 
crooked  little  man  glorying  in  his  birthplace  —  "  full 
of  crooked  little  streets  ;  but  I  tell  you  Boston  has 
opened,    and    kept    open,    more    turnpikes    that    lead 


238  BOSTON 

straight  to  free  thought  and  free  speech  and  free  deeds 
than  any  other  city  of  Hve  men  or  dead  men,  —  I 
don't  care  how  broad  their  streets  are,  nor  how  high 
their  steeples  !  "  The  sense  of  humor  which  gave  this 
character  of  "  Little  Boston  "  its  full  measure  of  eccen- 
tricity was  the  sense  which  generally  saved  Dr.  Holmes 
in  his  proper  person  from  letting  himself  confuse  the 
local  and  the  universal.  "  We  have  been  in  danger," 
he  wrote  in  1876,  "of  thinking  our  local  scale  was  the 
absolute  one  of  excellence  —  forgetting  that  .212  Fah- 
renheit is  but  100  Centigrade."  Of  course  he  did  not 
always  escape  this  danger  himself.  His  biographer, 
Mr.  J.  T.  Morse,  Jr.,  is  of  the  opinion  that  if  Dr. 
Holmes  had  travelled  more,  the  famous  Saturday  Club, 
which  embodied  the  best  masculine  society  of  the 
place,  "  would  have  assumed  proportions  more  accu- 
rately adapted  to  the  universe  in  general."  But  all 
such  contentions  are  capable  of  argument.  Dr.  Holmes 
himself  maintained  that  "identification  with  a  locality 
is  a  surer  passport  to  immortality  than  cosmopolitanism 
is."  His  own  case  seems  indeed  to  justify  this  belief. 
In  the  very  point  at  which  the  spirit  of  his  writing 
reflected  with  special  clearness  the  spirit  of  his  com- 
munity, he  at  once  incurred  the  strongest  displeasure 
of  some  of  his  contemporaries,  and  produced  his  most 
important  results  in  American  thought.  "  The  Pro- 
fessor," putting  into  popular  form  much  of  the  local 
spirit  of  liberal  theology,  must  be  counted  amongst  the 
emancipating  agencies  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The 
depolarization  of  words  has  become  both  a  phrase  and 


THE    "LITERARY    CENTRE" 


■39 


a  fact  by  reason  of  this  book.  Its  successive  instal- 
ments, as  they  appeared  in  The  Atlantic  Monthly^ 
brought  down  upon  the  magazine  and  its  chief  con- 
tributor charges  of  extreme  and  dangerous  radicahsm. 
"  If  one  could  believe  many  of  the  newspapers,"  Mr. 
Scudder  has  said,  "Dr.  Holmes  was  a  sort  of  reincar- 
nation of  Voltaire,  who  stood  for  the  most  audacious 
enemy  of  Christianity  in  modern  times."  Yet  Dr. 
Holmes,  the  chapel-going  descendant  of  the  "  meeting- 
going  animals  "  who,  according  to  John  Adams,  had 
populated  New  England,  had  little  in  common  with 
the  "  come-outers."  The  local  honors  of  class  and 
Phi  Beta  Kappa  poet.  Harvard  professor,  physician  at 
the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  meant  much  to 
him.  It  even  gratified  a  local  whimsical  pride  to  re- 
flect, after  the  great  fire  of  1872,  that  in  the  "Great 
Fire"  of  1760  his  great-grandfather  had  lost  forty  build- 
ings. There  is  significance,  too,  in  noticing  how  much 
completer  a  sympathy  he  brought  to  his  biography  of 
Motley  than  to  that  of  Emerson.  For  all  his  appre- 
ciation of  Emerson's  unique  greatness,  the  well-ordered 
scholarship  and  career  of  the  historian  must  have  typi- 
fied more  clearly  to  him  what  one  of  his  own  Bostoni- 
ans  should  be  and  do.  The  enlightened  conservatism 
in  him  spoke  nowhere  more  characteristically  than 
when  he  wrote,  "  I  go  politically  for  equality,  —  I 
said,  —  and  socially  for  the  quality,"  a  sentiment  to 
which  many  of  his  fellows  would  have  subscribed. 

To    his    place    among    the    New    England    classics 
Lowell  came  by  somewhat  different  paths  from  those 


240 


BOSTON 


of  Longfellow  and  Holmes.  Besi'des  being  a  man  of 
letters  and  a  man  of  the  same  world  to  which  his  dis- 
tinguished contemporaries  belonged,  he  had  formed 
early  and  dubious  alliances  with  the  antislavery  agita- 
tors. His  own  magazine,  The  Pioneer^  opening  with 
his  plea  for  a  natural  rather  than  a  national  literature, 
was  a  closed  book  after  three  numbers.  For  many 
years  thereafter  his  editorial  labors  identified  him 
closely,  through  The  Pennsylvania  Freeman  and  The 
Antislavery  Standard,  with  the  opponents  of  existing 
conditions.  The  scholar  who  is  not  primarily  a  poet 
may  usually  be  found  in  the  ranks  of  the  cautious  and 
contented.  The  poet,  the  idealist,  in  Lowell's  nature 
made  him  inevitably  also  something  of  a  reformer.  It 
was  not  till  Longfellow  tired  of  academic  duties  in  1 854 
that  Lowell  assumed  any  such  definite  connection  with 
the  established  order  of  things  as  a  Harvard  professor- 
ship implied.  His  completed  fame  derives  so  much 
from  his  work  as  an  essayist  and  student  of  literature 
that  there  is  danger  of  forgetting  the  unstinted  service 
of  his  early  muse  in  the  cause  of  reform,  a  cause  which 
could  not  at  first  be  either  conventional  or  popular.  The 
figure  of  Lowell  is,  however,  in  this  very  aspect,  char- 
acteristic and  important,  for  he  represented  one  of  the 
most  vital  forces  which  in  the  final  blending  rendered 
the  highest  literary  expression  of  Boston  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  precisely  what  it  was. 

The  year  1857  is  a  convenient  date  by  which  to 
mark  the  blending  of  elements  resulting  in  this  expres- 
sion.    In  that  year  The  Atlantic  Monthly  was  founded. 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE"        241 

The  story  of  its  origin,  due  in  large  measure  to  the 
enthusiasm  of  Francis  H.  Underwood,  representing  the 
pubHshing  house  of  Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.,  has  been 
frequently  told  in  recent  years.  The  magazine  was 
rarely  fortunate  in  having  Lowell  for  its  first  editor. 
His  sympathies,  personal,  intellectual,  political,  had 
perhaps  a  broader  national  scope  than  those  of  any 
other  man  to  whom  this  task  might  have  fallen.  He 
could  therefore  better  give  and  receive  what  would 
have  been  impossible  to  one  of  somewhat  parochial 
limitations.  Yet  it  was  from  the  writers  of  the  imme- 
diate vicinity  that  the  magazine  won  its  early  distinc- 
tion. The  editor  had  but  to  stretch  out  his  hand  to 
seize  an  embarrassment  of  riches.  In  the  twenty-five 
years  of  interruption  between  the  Autocrat's  early 
appearance  in  the  short-lived  New  England  Magazine 
and  the  resumption  of  his  talk  in  The  Atlantic^  Dr. 
Holmes  had  been  storing  his  treasures  of  fancy  and 
wisdom,  and  ripening  the  skill  with  which  he  finally 
brought  them  forth.  Emerson  and  those  who  were 
most  affected  by  his  influence  stood  ready  to  provide 
the  mellowed  best  results  of  Transcendental  thought. 
Lowell  himself,  Edmund  Quincy,  Whittier,  and  others 
brought  a  fine  element  of  fervor  for  the  antislavery 
cause  which  still  had  its  ultimate  victories  to  win.  In 
the  field  of  criticism  Edwin  Percy  Whipple,  lecturer 
and  writer,  whose  vanished  authority  and  vogue  are 
pathetic  emblems  of  the  value  of  contemporary  fame, 
contributed  with  others  the  best  obtainable  comment 
and  opinion.      Apart  from  their  individual  interests. 


242  BOSTON 

it  is  obvious  that  most  of  the  writers  —  let  us  add 
Longfellow,  and  Hawthorne,  soon  to  return  from 
Europe  —  could  be  relied  upon  for  definite  additions 
to  literature  itself.  Thus  more  or  less  directly  from 
the  spiritual  cause  of  TranscendentaHsm,  from  the 
politico-moral  cause  of  antislavery,  from  the  intellec- 
tual and  artistic  interest  of  purely  creative  writing  — 
each  represented  by  spirits  and  sometimes  by  minds 
of  the  first  order  —  there  came  a  union  of  strangely 
powerful  forces.  It  was  the  function  of  The- Atlantic 
to  provide  a  full  and  free  opportunity  for  the  expres- 
sion of  these  forces.  The  more  thoughtful  element, 
not  only  in  Boston  but  in  the  country  at  large,  was 
ready  for  just  this  influence  —  all  the  more  perhaps 
because  the  system  of  lyceum  lectures  had  not  yet 
gone  into  decay.  The  frequent  lecturing  tours  of  the 
Boston  leaders  of  thought  and  reform  had  made  their 
personalities  familiar  throughout  New  England  and 
many  Southern  and  Western  states.  To  find  them 
assembled  in  the  pages  of  The  Atlantic  was,  for  a  large 
audience,  like  a  reunion  of  honored  friends. 

In  its  second  editor,  James  T.  Fields,  The  Atlantic 
was  also  fortunate.  Within  a  little  more  than  two 
years  of  its  founding,  the  magazine  fell  into  the  hands 
of  the  firm  of  which  he  was  then  a  member.  Begin- 
ning as  a  bookseller's  clerk  who  astonished  his  fellow- 
salesmen  at  the  "  Old  Corner  "  by  whispering  a  correct 
prophecy  of  what  each  customer  entering  the  shop 
would  demand,  he  had  become  a  publisher  well  skilled 
in  gauging  the  public  taste.      At  the  same  time  he  was 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE" 


243 


sufficiently  a  maker  of  books  by  his  own  pen  to  meet 
his  writers  on  even  a  broader  common  ground  than  his 
unusual  gifts  of  friendship  could  alone  have  provided. 
It  was  impossible  that  a  man  with  so  many  decisions 
to  render  should  make  nothing  but  friends ;  and  there 
is  at  least  one  volume,  by  a  vigorous  feminine  writer, 
which  will  reproduce  for  those  who  seek  it  the  note  of 
discord  in  the  harmonies  of  the  time  and  place.  For 
the  far  more  general  feeling,  Dr.  Holmes,  soon  after 
the  death  of  Mr.  Fields,  in  1881,  spoke  in  words  which 
amply  suggest  the  influence  an  editor  and  publisher 
may  wield :  "How  many  writers  know,  as  I  have 
known,  his  value  as  a  literary  counsellor  and  friend  ! 
His  mind  was  as  hospitable  as  his  roof,  which  has 
accepted  famous  visitors  and  quiet  friends  alike  as  if  it 
had  been  their  own.  .  .  .  Very  rarely,  if  ever,  has  a 
publisher  enjoyed  the  confidence  and  friendship  of  so 
wide  and  various  a  circle  of  authors." 

From  all  the  record  of  this  "  harvest-time  "  of  letters, 
one  carries  away  a  vivid  impression  of  a  happy  family. 
Its  members  rejoiced  like  brothers  in  the  successes 
won  by  each  in  turn.  Working  apart,  yet  side  by  side, 
they  met  like  brothers  for  relaxation  and  play.  The 
project  of  The  Atlantic  itself  was  at  once  launched  and 
lunched  into  being,  for  it  was  round  a  table  at  Parker's 
that  the  plan  for  the  new  magazine  first  took  definite 
form.  It  was  the  habit  of  the  most  important  early 
contributors  to  meet  frequently  in  the  same  informal 
way.  But  the  "  Atlantic  Club "  was  soon  over- 
shadowed by  the  more  conspicuous  and  comprehensive 


244  BOSTON 

"Saturday  Club/'  also  begun  in  1857.  This  monthly 
gathering  at  Parker's,  which  had  as  its  nucleus  Emer- 
son and  a  few  friends  who  made  a  practice  of  meeting 
him  at  the  midday  dinner-table  when  he  came  in  from 
Concord,  appears  and  reappears,  always  with  an  affec- 
tionate mention,  in  the  journals  and  letters  of  the 
time.  Emerson,  Longfellow,  Holmes,  Lowell,  Haw- 
thorne, Whittier,  Agassiz,  Motley,  Fields,  Dana,  — 
in  whose  Life,  by  Mr.  Charles  Francis  Adams,  the 
best  account  of  the  club  is  to  be  found,  —  these,  with 
a  few  others  not  in  general  so  closely  related  to  lit- 
erature, made  up  the  membership.  Distinguished 
visitors  were  entertained,  without  the  sensation  of 
lions  on  exhibition.  The  intercourse  of  friendship 
and  good  talk  received  no  check  from  the  reading  of 
papers.  Dr.  Holmes  rejoiced  in  the  blessed  freedom 
from  speechmaking.  It  is  told  of  Emerson  that  "  in 
1864,  when  the  club  held  a  Shakespearian  anniversary 
meeting,  he  rose  to  speak,  stood  for  a  minute  or  two, 
and  then  quietly  sat  down.  Speech  did  not  come,  and 
he  serenely  permitted  silence  to  speak  for  him."  This 
incident  may  be  more  characteristic  of  Emerson  than 
of  his  club;  yet  it  reveals  a  perfect  understanding  and 
fellowship  which  help  one  to  accept  all  that  is  said  of 
the  separate  place  this  formless  organization  held  in  the 
hearts  and  lives  of  its  members.  Another  club  of  Emer- 
son's, deriving  its  name  from  the  Unitarian  periodical 
of  which  it  was  the  outgrowth,  though  now  containing 
representatives  of  the  Roman  Catholic  and  Episcopal 
churches,   was   the    "  Examiner    Club."      "  The    easy 


^.  (?C6^,/P^4.^//. 


'c>«^^, 


1^  ^^^^ 


Diagram  of  a  Saturday  Club  Dinner,  in  the  handwriting  of 
John  S.  Dwight. 


246  BOSTON 

talk  of  such  men  as  Emerson,  the  elder  Henry  James, 
Governor  Andrew,  Dr.  Hedge,  Whipple,  and  others 
of  distinguished  ability,"  is  said  by  one  of  its  older 
members  to  have  "  touched  the  higher  possibilities  of 
conversation  when  the  art  was  more  in  evidence  than  at 
present."  In  the  Saturday  Club  at  its  best  those  possibili- 
ties may  well  have  been  even  more  frequently  attained. 
It  was  entirely  natural  for  such  a  body  of  men  to 
win  from  outsiders  the  name  of  "The  Mutual  Admi- 
ration Society."  If  no  mutual  admiration  existed,  it 
was,  as  Dr.  Holmes  declared,  "a  great  pity,  and 
implied  a  defect  in  the  nature  of  men  who  were  other- 
wise largely  endowed."  Elsewhere  he  wrote  :  "  I 
don't  know  whether  our  literary  or  professional  people 
are  more  amiable  than  they  are  in  other  places,  but 
certainly  quarrelling  is  out  of  fashion  among  them. 
This  could  never  be,  if  they  were  in  the  habit  of  secret 
anonymous  puffing  of  each  other.  That  is  the  kind 
of  underground  machinery  which  manufactures  false 
reputations  and  genuine  hatreds.  On  the  other  hand, 
I  should  like  to  know  if  we  are  not  at  liberty  to 
have  a  good  time  together,  and  say  the  pleasantest 
things  we  can  think  of  to  each  other,  when  any  of  us 
reaches  his  thirtieth  or  fortieth  or  fiftieth  or  eightieth 
birthday."  Here  in  all  sincerity  speaks  the  member 
of  that  happy  family  of  which  the  Saturday  Club  was 
the  accepted  meeting-place.  The  Atlantic  the  recognized 
organ,  and  the  considerable  contribution  of  these 
Boston  writers  of  the  nineteenth  century  to  American 
literature  the  permanent  memorial. 


THE   "LITERARY   CENTRE''         247 

It  was  not  until  the  year  1894  that  the  death  of  Dr. 
Holmes  bore  away  the  latest  survivor  of  this  group 
of  contemporary  friends.  Lowell  and  Whittier  had 
also  seen  the  beginning  of  the  last  decade  of  the  cen- 
tury. In  the  next  to  the  last  Emerson  and  Long- 
fellow had  gone — following  Motley  in  1877  and 
Hawthorne  in  1864.  With  the  eighties  the  group 
may  be  said  to  have  been  disintegrated.  A  few  of 
their  younger  brothers,  such  as  Dr.  Hale,  Professor 
Norton,  and  Colonel  Higginson,  have  remained  to 
typify  the  older  to  the  younger  generation.  In  them, 
as  in  many  of  those  who  will  be  their  successors,  abides 
the  old-time  qi^ality  of  representing  the  best  social  and 
academic  traditions  of  the  place.  With  the  gradual 
passing  of  the  older  brotherhood,  Boston  unquestion- 
ably lost  its  preeminence  as  the  "  literary  centre  "  of 
the  country.  Where  this  wandering  spot  has  fixed 
itself,  or  where  it  may  be  found  ten  years  hence,  one 
may  not  assert  too  confidently.  There  is  one  point, 
however,  at  which  the  student  of  local  conditions  rests 
with  some  assurance.  The  best  expression  of  Boston 
thought  and  life  in  Hterature  has  never  come  from  a 
class  set  apart  as  writers.  There  has  been  —  so  far 
as  the  best  writing  is  concerned  —  no  restricted  "lit- 
erary set,"  despising  and  despised  of  its  neighbors. 
Authorship  has  never  been  so  general  as  to  require 
the  adoption  of  the  formula  said  by  the  scornful  to  be 
used  in  Cambridge  as  the  best  of  morning  greetings  — 
"  How  is  your  book  coming  on  ?  "  Yet  the  emphasis 
laid  upon  the  backgrounds  of  such  lives  as  Prescott's 


248 


BOSTON 


and  Longfellow's  will  have  been  in  vain  if  there  is 
need  of  further  testimony  to  the  identification  of  the 
writers  with  the  most  characteristic  and  agreeable  life 
of  the  town.  A  representative  author,  in  other  words, 
was  perhaps  even  more  likely  to  appear  where  one 
would  least  expect  him  than  in  the  surroundings  asso- 
ciated  with    the    commoner   traditions   of  authorship. 


Massachusetts  Historical  Society  Building,  Boylston  Street 

AND  f'ENWAY. 

In  the  Boston  Custom-house,  for  example,  Bancroft 
and  Hawthorne  were  to  be  found  at  the  same  time. 
For  WilHs,  on  the  other  hand,  fresh  from  college  and 
full  of  zeal  for  the  life  of  editor  and  author,  there 
seemed  no  place  in  Boston.  Upon  the  scholarly  hard 
work  done  by  the  men  of  letters  who  were  also  men  of 
the  world  it  has  not  been  thought  necessary  to  dwell. 
This  is  rendered  superfluous  by  what  they  have  written. 


THE    "LITERARY    CENTRE'^         249 

The  writer's  frank  intention,  moreover,  has  been  to 
keep  in  view  the  local  quality  of  his  theme.  The  lit- 
erary product  touched  upon  so  cursorily  and  with  so 
many  obvious  omissions  happens  to  form  an  integral 
part  of  American  literature.  Here  it  is  regarded  in  its 
relation  to  local  conditions.  The  advantages  gained 
through  these  conditions  are  perhaps  evident.  So 
should  the  limitations  be.  Respectability,  freedom 
from  the  bitter  struggle  of  those  who  have  nothing 
but  their  pens  and  their  wits  to  rely  upon,  a  certain 
remoteness  and  separation,  in  a  mere  geographical 
sense,  from  elements  elsewhere  characteristic  of  Amer- 
ican life,  —  these  may  work  to  helpful  or  harmful  ends. 
Their  influences,  both  for  good  and  its  opposite,  may 
be  traced  in  the  work  of  the  Boston  writers.  They  go 
far,  in  any  event,  to  explain  the  total  product.  If  that 
product  and  the  life  from  which  it  sprang  justify  the 
frequent  likening  of  Boston  in  its  prime  as  a  "literary 
centre  "  to  Edinburgh  under  similar  conditions,  it  is  at 
least  to  be  added  that  Boston  was  an  Edinburgh  with- 
out a  London. 


IX 


THE    SLAVE    AND    THE    UNION 


W 


Lock  and  Key  of  Leverett 
Street  Jail,  1835. 


HEN  Lafayette  visited 
Boston  in  1 824  and  was 
welcomed  by  a  great  multitude, 
he  turned  to  Josiah*  Quincy, 
mayor  of  the  city,  and  asked, 
"  But  where  is  the  mob  ?  "  In- 
deed there  was  nothing  more 
mob-like  to  show  than  the 
crowds  which  suggested  to  the 
visitor  "  a  picked  population 
out  of  the  whole  human  race."  From  many  accounts 
of  the  "mob"  which  nearly  killed  William  Lloyd 
Garrison  in  the  streets  of  Boston  eleven  years  later,  we 
are  led  to  suppose  that  it  had  the  same  blameless  ap- 
pearance. "  This  mob,"  says  Henry  Wilson,  "  came 
not  from  the  purlieus  of  Fort  Hill  and  Ann  Street, 
but  from  the  counting-rooms  of  State  Street  and  the 
parlors  of  Beacon  Street."  It  is  this  topographical 
fact  which  renders  the  mere  existence  of  a  statue  of 
Garrison  at  the  very  centre  of  the  later  social  life  of 
Boston  the  significant  thing  it  is.  For  a  more  striking 
emblem  of  the  changes  wrought  within  the  lifetime  of 
the  arch-abolitionist,  one  would  look  in  vain.  From 
the  men  of  1835  his  living  body  was  narrowly  rescued. 

250 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     251 

Now  for  nearly  twenty  years  the  grandchildren  and 
great-grandchildren  of  these  very  men  have  used  the 
reformer's  effigy  as  a  nucleus  for  their  laughing  games. 
Such  changes  do  not  come  without  struggle  and  resist- 


William  Lloyd  Garrison,  Commonwealth  Avenue. 
Bronze  by  Olin  L.  Warner. 

ance.     The  story  of  them  is  but  another  of  the  local 
records  with  a  meaning  that  is  fairly  national. 

The  "  Garrison  mob  "  of  1835  may  be  taken  as  the 
first  action  of  concrete  warfare  between  the  hostile 
camps  which  Garrison,  more  than  any  other  single  man, 
had  already  arrayed  against  each  other  —  the  camps  of 
abolition  and  of  laiss ex-fair e.      Let  us  see  exactly  what 


252  BOSTON 

his  Liberator,  of  which  the  first  number  was  published 
in  Boston,  January  i,  1 83 1,  proposed  to  do.  It  is  all  a 
tale  that  has  been  told  again  and  again.  All  the  more, 
perhaps,  we  need  to  remind  ourselves  of  its  essential 
points.  The  very  word  Liberator,  then,  meant  pre- 
cisely what  it  saido  Garrison  set  the  simple  definition 
of  slavery  as  "  the  holding  of  a  human  being  as  prop- 
erty "  clearly  before  him,  uncompromisingly  felt  the 
wrong  in  such  an  institution,  and  devoted  his  life  to 
the  cause  of  "  immediate  emancipation"  —  ?t  phrase  to 
which  he  attached  quite  as  literal  a  meaning  as  the 
word  Liberator  conveyed  to  his  mind.  In  the  first 
number  of  his  paper  he  made  a  salutatory  address 
which  so  accurately  gives  the  spirit  in  which  his  work 
was  undertaken  that  it  cannot  escape  frequent  quota- 
tion :  "  I  am  aware  that  many  object  to  the  severity  of 
my  language  ;  but  is  there  not  cause  for  severity  ?  I 
will  be  as  harsh  as  truth,  and  as  uncompromising  as 
justice.  On  the  subject  of  slavery  I  do  not  wish  to 
think,  or  speak,  or  write,  with  moderation.  No  !  no  ! 
Tell  a  man  whose  house  is  on  fire  to  give  a  moderate 
alarm ;  tell  him  to  moderately  rescue  his  wife  from  the 
hands  of  the  ravisher ;  tell  the  mother  to  gradually 
extricate  her  babe  from  the  fire  into  which  it  has 
fallen,  —  but  urge  me  not  to  use  moderation  in  a 
cause  like  the  present.  I  am  in  earnest  —  I  will  not 
equivocate  —  I  will  not  excuse  —  I  will  not  retreat  a 
single  inch  —  and  I  will  be  heard.''  A  native  of  Essex, 
with  a  brief  experience  of  Baltimore  and  the  South, 
the  prophet  of  twenty-six  spoke  with  all  a  prophet's 


THE   SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION 


^S3 


®ut  Counttg  is  tijt  ajEorlB,  our  Countrgmcn  att  all  iKanftinli. 


Final  Heading  of  Libehatob. 

fervid  conviction.  He  had  deliberately  chosen  Boston 
as  the  place  for  the  utterance  of  The  Liberator  s  mes- 
sage because  he  felt  that  Richmond  or  Charleston 
stood  scarcely  more  in  need  of  it.  He  assumed  and 
held  his  tone  of  vehement  aggression  with  a  full  con- 
sciousness of  what  he  was  about.  When  a  friend  in 
private,  urging  him  to  keep  more  cool,  said,  "  Why, 
you  are  all  on  fire,"  Garrison's  confident  reply  came, 
"  I  have  need  to  be  all  on  jire^  for  I  have  mountains 
of  ice  about  me  to  melt."  He  knew  the  Boston 
which  surrounded  him. 

A  year  after  the  beginning  of  The  Liberator^  the 
New  England  Antislavery  Society,  the  first  American 
organization  of  its  kind,  was  estabHshed  in  Boston. 
Here,  in  its  simplest  form,  was  another  of  the  agencies 
by  which  the  ice  was  to  be  melted.  The  meeting  at 
which  the  constitution  of  the  society  was  adopted  was 
held  on  the  night  of  a  bitter  snowstorm,  in  the  school- 
room under  a  negro  church.  The  instrument  had 
twelve  signers,  one  of  whom,  Oliver  Johnson,  has  left 


254  BOSTON 

the  record  of  his  belief  that  "  there  were  not  more 
than  one  or  two  who  could  have  put  a  hundred 
dollars  into  the  treasury  without  bankrupting  them- 
selves." The  whole  enterprise  would  have  seemed  to 
a  student  of  human  chances  as  impossible  as  it  was 
obscure.  We  have  seen  the  spirit  in  which  Garrison 
began  the  work  of  his  Liberator.  It  will  be  equally 
well  to  know  exactly  what  the  first  organized  aboli- 
tionists set  before  themselves  as  their  ideal  and  their 
task.  This  is  presented  in  the  preamble  to  their  con- 
stitution, modified  a  year  later,  but  clearly  setting 
forth  the  chief  articles  of  the  primitive  abolitionist 
faith :  "  We,  the  undersigned,  hold  that  every  per- 
son, of  full  age  and  sane  mind,  has  a  right  to  imme- 
diate freedom  from  personal  bondage  of  whatsoever 
kind,  unless  imposed  by  the  sentence  of  law  for  the 
commission  of  some  crime.  We  hold  that  man  can- 
not, consistently  with  reason,  religion,  and  the  eternal 
and  immutable  principles  of  justice,  be  the  property 
of  man.  We  hold  that  whoever  retains  his  fellow- 
man  in  bondage  is  guilty  of  a  grievous  wrong. 
We  hold  that  mere  difference  of  complexion  is  no 
reason  why  any  man  should  be  deprived  of  any  of 
his  natural  rights,  or  subjected  to  any  political  disa- 
bility. While  we  advance  these  opinions  as  the 
principles  on  which  we  intend  to  act,  we  declare  that 
we  will  not  operate  in  the  existing  relations  of  society 
by  other  than  peaceful  and  lawful  means,  and  that 
we  will  give  no  countenance  to  violence  or  insur- 
rection." 


THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     255 

Here,  in  spite  of  the  pacific  flavor  of  the  last  sentence, 
were  sentiments  to  which  neither  North  nor  South 
could  turn  a  heedless  ear.  To  the  South,  Garrison, 
naturally  enough,  typified  the  new  agitation  ;  and  the 
following  editorial  expression  represented  the  calmer 
Southern  view  :  "  We  know  nothing  of  the  man  ;  we 
desire  not  to  have  him  unlawfully  dealt  with  ;  we  can 
even  conceive  of  his  motive  being  good  in  his  own 
opinion  :  but  it  is  the  motive  of  the  man  who  cuts  the 
throats  of  your  wife  and  children."  Of  a  Northern 
attitude  that  was  largely  typical,  and  of  the  abolitionist 
manner  of  meeting  it,  a  single  concrete  instance,  taken 
from  the  "  Recollections  "  of  the  Rev.  S.  J.  May,  is 
more  illustrative  than  pages  of  generalization  could 
be.  Mr.  May,  an  ardent  fellow-worker  with  Garrison, 
was  speaking  at  a  New  York  antislavery  meeting  in 
1835,  and  saw  a  man  enter  whom  he  recognized  as  a 
partner  in  one  of  the  chief  mercantile  firms  of  the  city. 
He  beckoned  Mr.  May  to  the  door,  and  when  they 
stood  together  on  the  sidewalk,  said :  — 

"'  Mr.  May,  we  are  not  such  fools  as  not  to  know 
that  slavery  is  a  great  evil,  a  great  wrong.  But  it  was 
consented  to  by  the  founders  of  our  Republic.  It  was 
provided  for  in  the  Constitution  of  our  Union.  A  great 
portion  of  the  property  of  the  Southerners  is  invested 
under  its  sanction  ;  and  the  business  of  the  North,  as 
well  as  the  South,  has  become  adjusted  to  it.  There 
are  millions  upon  millions  of  dollars  due  from  South- 
erners to  the  merchants  and  mechanics  of  this  city 
alone,  the    payment   of  which  would  be  jeopardized 


1S6  BOSTON 

by  any  rupture  between  North  and  South.  We  cannot 
afford,  sir,  to  let  you  and  your  associates  succeed  in 
your  endeavor  to  overthrow  slavery.  It  is  not  a 
matter  of  principle  with  us.  It  is  a  matter  of  business 
necessity.  We  cannot  afford  to  let  you  succeed.  We 
mean,  sir,'  said  he,  with  increased  emphasis,  —  'we 
mean,  sir,  to  put  you  abolitionists  down,  —  by  fair 
means  if  we  can,  by  foul  means  if  we  must.' 

"  After  a  minute's  pause  I  replied  :  '  Then,  sir,  the 
gain  of  gold  must  be  better  than  that  of •  godliness. 
Error  must  be  mightier  than  truth ;  wrong  stronger 
than  right.  The  Devil  must  preside  over  the  affairs 
of  the  universe,  and  not  God.  Now,  sir,  I  believe 
neither  of  these  propositions.  If  holding  men  in 
slavery  be  wrong,  it  will  be  abolished.  We  shall 
succeed,  your  pecuniary  interest  to  the  contrary  not- 
withstanding.' " 

Borrowed  from  New  York,  this  dialogue  has  no 
peculiar  local  flavor.  It  is  characteristic  merely  of  the 
North,  and  is  cited  here  at  length,  with  the  Garrison 
utterance  and  the  abolitionist  preamble,  in  order  to 
suggest  yet  another  important  element  in  the  bewilder- 
ing case  that  had  to  be  argued,  through  deed  and  word, 
in  every  American  city.  In  addition  to  what  all  the 
North  had  in  common,  the  slavery  question  in  Boston 
had  local  flavor  enough  and  to  spare.  To  Garrison 
and  his  comrades  the  place  owed  its  distinction  of  being 
the  headquarters  of  agitation.  Through  the  "  good 
principle  of  rebellion  "  constantly  at  work  in  Boston, 
Garrison  never  wanted    supporters  who  refused  with 


THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     257 

him  to  accept  the  conditions  accepted  by  others.  In 
the  conservative  forces,  on  the  other  hand,  no  less 
than  in  the  radical,  Boston  had  its  own  characteristics. 
If  the  unchecked  stalking  of  respectability  told  upon 
letters,  its  effect  upon  the  social  and  political  order  was 
even  more  pronounced.  The  growth  of  the  cotton 
manufacturing  industry  in  Massachusetts  brought  the 
powerful  commercial  class  of  Boston  into  close  relations 
with  the  powerful  cotton-raising,  slave-owning  class  at 
the  South.  Southern  planters  coming  to  the  Boston 
hotels,  as  to  those  of  a  summer  resort,  received  abun- 
dant hospitality  at  the  best  private  houses.  Their 
sons  at  Harvard,  with  large  allowances  and  engaging 
manners,  formed  Northern  friendships  which  forbade 
the  chosen  youth  of  New  England  to  regard  all  slave- 
holders with  aversion.  It  was  rather  the  reformer, 
the  abolitionist,  himself  outside  the  social  pale  and 
hostile  to  existing  institutions,  who  needed  to  be 
abolished.  The  people  of  Boston,  says  the  biographer 
of  Sumner,  "  had  a  keen  sense  of  legality,  sharpened 
at  times  by  material  interests."  Nearly  every  influ- 
ence persuaded  the  average  citizen  to  the  letting  of 
well  enough  alone. 

Among  the  strongest  of  those  conservative  forces 
were,  of  course,  the  clergy.  Throughout  the  North 
the  abolitionists  were  confronted  from  the  first  by  the 
clerical  influences,  which  lent  all  their  strength  to  the 
Colonization  Society  and  its  somewhat  Utopian  plan 
of  carrying  blacks  to  Africa.  It  may  be,  as  Mr.  May 
declared,  —  in  defence  of  his  cloth,  —  that  a  greater 


258  BOSTON 

proportion  of  clergymen  than  of  either  of  the  other 
"learned  professions"  embraced  the  cause  of  "imme- 
diate emancipation."  Certainly  as  the  conflict  went  on, 
this  cause  was  palpably  the  stronger  for  the  help  espe- 
cially of  Unitarian  ministers  in  New  England.  But 
in  the  earner  stages  the  churches  in  general,  and  the 
Boston  Unitarian  leaders  in  particular,  could  see  little 
or  nothing  to  commend  in  the  purposes  and  methods 
of  the  Garrisonians.  There  were,  of  course,  many  who 
drew  a  clear  line  of  distinction  between  "  antislavery  " 
and  "  abolition."  Like  the  New  York  merchant,  they 
saw  the  wrong  and  evil  of  slavery  ;  they  were  ready 
to  do  even  more  than  he  toward  making  things  better 
—  but  not  according  to  the  abolitionist  programme. 
Their  sentiments  found  expression  in  these  words 
of  Dr.  Gannett's  :  "  The  general  strain  of  language  of 
the  abolitionists  toward,  —  not  only  slaveholders,  of 
whom  I  mean  not  now  to  say  anything,  —  but  toward 
Northern  men  who  do  not  agree  with  them,  is,  I 
think,  unchristian,  bitterly  and  fiercely  unchristian. 
With  a  party  which  glories  in  such  a  course  I  can- 
not strike  hands.  I  may  sympathize  in  their  objects, 
while  I  dread  and  abhor  their  spirit."  To  such  com- 
ment the  more  heated  advocates  of  abolition  made 
their  retort  by  calling  the  clergy  the  "  brotherhood  of 
Thieves." 

Indeed,  why  should  not  the  typical  Boston  Unita- 
rian, minister  or  layman,  have  dreaded  and  abhorred 
the  abolitionist  spirit  ?  The  prevailing  habit  of 
thought  and  feehng  was  to  dwell  so  lovingly  on  the 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     259 

good  qualities  of  human  nature  that  tragedy  and  evil 
came  to  look  almost  as  remote  as  in  daily  experience 
they  were.  Dr.  Frothingham  has  told  the  story  of  a 
Boston  clergyman  whose  subscription  was  asked  for  a 
charity  on  behalf  of  prisoners  ;  he  took  out  his  pocket- 
book,  saying,  "  I  will  give  you  something,  for  evidently 
you  need  it,  but  I  have  no  faith  in  your  cause  ;  my 
preference  is  for  people  who  don't  get  into  jail."  Of 
Dr.  Walker,  the  distinguished  Unitarian  minister  who 
became  president  of  Harvard  College,  Dr.  Frothing- 
ham's  book  preserves  the  report  that  he  would  not 
even  vote  —  "  lest  he  should  be  associated  in  the  public 
mind  with  political  opinions.  He  was  a  clergyman, 
and  as  such  pledged  to  the  single  duty  of  educating 
people  in  character."  Nor  did  the  influence,  accord- 
ing to  Dr.  Frothingham,  flow  all  in  one  direction  — 
from  the  pulpit  to  the  pews.  The  fact  that  the  Uni- 
tarian congregations  contained  the  chief  men  of  affairs 
and  of  thought,  merchants,  politicians,  judges,  the 
dignified  figures  representing  stability  and  order,  could 
not  but  have  its  effect.  The  ministers  would  have 
been  something  more  than  human  if,  in  the  august 
presences  of  Webster,  Everett,  Ticknor,  Prescott,  and 
the  rest,  they  had  proclaimed  the  opinions  of  these 
men  on  one  point  of  pubHc  order  to  be  utterly  at  fault, 
and  the  voice  of  the  people,  for  whom  the  abolitionists 
came  more  and  more  to  speak,  to  be  the  true  voice  of 
God.  It  is  easy  to  see,  therefore,  why  by  the  summer 
of  1835,  when  The  Liberator  had  been  fulminating 
against  the  forces  of  respectability  for  four  years,  and 


i6o  BOSTON 

antislavery  meetings  had  steadily  increased  in  frequency 
and  violence  of  speech,  there  were  fifteen  hundred  citi- 
zens of  Boston  ready  to  sign  a  call  for  a  pubhc  meet- 
ing in  Faneuil  Hall  to  denounce  the  agitators  of  the 
slavery  question  for  endangering  the  Union  itself. 
The  mayor  of  the  city,  Theodore  Lyman,  Jr.,  presided 
at  the  meeting ;  Abbott  Lawrence  was  one  of  its  vice- 
presidents,  and  Harrison  Gray  Otis  a  speaker.  The 
abolitionists  were  roundly  denounced ;  and  a  few  days 
later  The  Liberator  placed  the  blame  for  -whatever 
trouble  might  spring  from  such  unrestrained  speeches 
squarely  on  the  shoulders  of  the  distinguished  speakers. 
The  premonition  of  trouble  was  correct. 

The  day  of  the  "Garrison  mob''  —  to  call  the  riot 
by  its  historic  name  —  has  left  one  of  the  darkest  spots 
in  the  whole  calendar  of  Boston  history.  It  was  not 
entirely  the  sporadic  thing  one  would  naturally  think 
it.  Only  the  summer  before  (August  ii,  1834),  a 
mob,  stirred  up  by  a  false  report  that  a  young  woman 
was  restrained  against  her  will  in  the  Ursuline  Con- 
vent at  Charlestown,  attacked  that  institution,  pillaged 
its  property,  and  destroyed  the  building  by  fire.  This 
cowardly  attack  upon  unprotected  women  and  girls 
had  the  poor  excuse  that  it  proceeded  from  fellows  of 
the  baser  sort,  excited  by  the  powerful  stimulant  of 
religious  prejudice.  The  Garrison  mob  had  no  such 
excuse.  In  practically  every  account  of  it,  beginning 
with  that  of  Garrison  himself,  the  rioters  have  been 
described  as  "  gentlemen  of  property  and  standing." 
Only  a  year  earlier  Channing  had  deplored  the  com- 


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THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     263 

mon  remark,  "  These  mobs  are  bad,  but  they  will  put 
down  antislavery."  This  was  the  remark  of  respect- 
able lookers-on.  In  the  Boston  mob  of  October  21, 
1835,  these  spectators  took  the  part  of  the  chief  actors. 
For  this  day  the  Boston  Female  Antislavery  Society 
had  advertised  a  meeting  at  46,  Washington  Street,  the 
building  which  contained  The  Liberator  office.  It  was 
supposed,  outside  the  antislavery  ranks,  that  George 
Thompson,  the  eminent  English  abolitionist,  whose 
very  presence  in  America  was  bitterly  resented,  would 
take  part  in  the  meeting.  As  a  matter  of  fact  he  was 
not  expected  to  speak,  and  was  not  even  in  Boston  at 
the  time.  Yet  the  placards,  calling  upon  the  "  friends 
of  the  Union  "  to  bring  him  to  the  tar-kettle  before 
dark,  had  the  effect  of  collecting  a  great  crowd  about 
the  antislavery  headquarters  before  the  hour  of  the 
meeting.  Thus  all  but  about  thirty  women  were  pre- 
vented from  entering  the  hall.  These,  in  spite  of 
interruptions  from  the  crowd,  were  proceeding  with 
their  meeting  when  Mayor  Lyman  appeared  on  the 
scene  and,  pleading  that  he  could  not  insure  their 
safety,  induced  them  to  go  home.  They  made 
their  way  through  the  crowd,  which  by  this  time  had 
learned  that  Garrison  was  in  his  office.  Shouting 
was  heard :  "  We  must  have  Garrison  !  Out  with  him. 
Lynch  him  !  "  The  mayor,  seeing  how  slender  was 
the  chance  of  holding  the  mob  in  check,  advised  Gar- 
rison to  escape  from  the  rear  of  the  building.  This  he 
attempted  to  do,  but  his  progress  led  him  only  into  a  car- 
penter's shop  behind  the  Washington  Street  building. 


264  '      BOSTON 

where  he  was  seized.  Some  of  his  captors  were  for 
throwing  him  out  of  a  window.  The  opposite  counsel, 
to  put  a  rope  round  his  body  and  have  him  descend 
by  a  ladder,  prevailed.  Thus  he  was  paid  out  into  the 
very  arms  of  the  mob.  Here  his  clothes  —  a  new  suit 
which  he  frugally  lamented  —  were  torn  from  his  body, 
and  worse  things  would  have  befallen  him  but  for  a 
few  lovers  of  fair  play,  who  shouted,  "  He  shan't  be 
hurt!  He  is  an  American!"  and,  forming  a  small 
bodyguard,  succeeded  in  getting  him  inside  the  doors 
of  the  City  Hall  —  the  Old  State  House.  "  Through- 
out the  whole  of  this  trying  scene,"  he  afterward  said, 
"  I  felt  perfectly  calm,  nay,  very  happy.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  it  was  indeed  a  blessed  privilege  thus  to  suffer 
in  the  cause  of  Christ.  Death  did  not  present  one 
repulsive  feature.  The  promises  of  God  sustained 
my  soul,  so  that  it  was  not  only  divested  of  fear,  but 
ready  to  sing  aloud  for  joy."  From  the  City  Hall 
the  mayor  managed  to  smuggle  Garrison  into  a  hack. 
Again  the  mob  recognized  him,  and  the  circuitous 
drive  to  Leverett  Street  jail,  whither  he  was  sent  for 
safety,  was  accomplished  through  further  tumult  and 
peril.  His  haven  of  refuge,  the  cell,  was  shared,  as  he 
said,  with  "two  delightful  associates  —  a  good  con- 
science and  a  cheerful  mind."  Friends  came  to  visit 
him  in  the  evening,  and  the  night  was  passed  in  tran- 
quil sleep.  Altogether  the  honors  of  the  day  belonged 
to  this  defeated  abolitionist,  and  to  the  women  whose 
retreat  became  a  victory. 

It  should  be  noted  that  the  immediate  occasion  of 


THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     265 

the  Garrison  mob  was  a  meeting  of  women.  Through 
this  circumstance  the  women  take  their  place  early  and 
prominently,  as  they  should,  on  the  abolitionist  stage. 
Dissensions  over  this  very  prominence  were  soon  to 
rend  the  antislavery  ranks.  The  more  radical  advo- 
cates of  immediate  emancipation  were  ready  to  see  the 
women  of  the  white  race  liberated  from  the  conven- 
tions of  silence  and  restraint.  Within  the  ranks  of 
reform  there  were  those  who  sympathized  with  the 
feeling  of  the  people  at  large,  that  the  public  appear- 
ance of  women  ran  counter  to  the  very  order  and 
decency  of  the  Christian  church.  But  the  two  eman- 
cipations went  hand  in  hand.  When  the  earlier  cause 
was  won,  many  of  its  champions  continued  their  work 
in  the  cause  of  woman  suffrage.  The  "strong-minded 
woman,"  who  is  regarded  as  a  peculiar  product  of 
Boston,  had  her  origin,  then,  under  provocations  more 
compelling  than  those  of  recent  years.  To  the  women 
of  the  North  the  condition  of  women  under  slavery 
made  a  potent  appeal.  It  was  an  appeal  to  which 
they  could  respond  with  warmer  hearts  because  no 
question  of  their  own  "rights"  was  involved.  In 
Boston  their  response  was  of  the  greatest  practical 
value  to  the  antislavery  leaders.  Whether  they  spoke 
or  merely  sat  upon  the  platform,  their  presence  at 
public  meetings,  often  stormy,  brought  encouragement 
and  strength.  We  can  look  with  true  admiration  on 
the  picture,  drawn  by  Mrs.  Howe  in  her  Reminiscences, 
of  Maria  Weston  Chapman  and  Lydia  Maria  Child 
walking  calmly  on  each  side  of  Wendell  Phillips  as  he 


iGG 


BOSTON 


came  out  from  an  evening  meeting  into  the  street 
where  the  crowd  of  waiting  roughs  had  promised  him 
a  violent  reception.  The  crowd  looked  quietly  on 
as   the   speaker  and   his  escort  went  their  way.     We 

can  look  with  amusement 
on  another  picture,  set- 
ting forth  the  embarrass- 
ment caused  by  a  woman 
of  more  zeal  than  discre- 
tion.      It  became   neces- 


Lydia  Maria  Child. 

Photograph  in  possession  of 

F.  J.  Garrison,  Esq. 


sary  on  one  occasion  to 
remove  from  an  anti- 
slavery  meeting  in  Marl- 
boro Chapel  a  woman 
whose  monomania  for  free 
speech  caused  frequent 
trouble.  Oliver  Johnson 
and  two  others  placed  her 
gently  in  a  chair  and  car- 
ried her  down  the  aisle. 
"  Tm  better  off  than  my  Master  was,"  she  exclaimed ; 
"  He  had  but  one  ass  to  ride  —  I  have  three  to 
carry  me."  But  there  were  other  occasions  than  such 
public  meetings  for  the  women  to  save  or  to  mar. 
The  chief  of  these  was  the  annual  Antislavery  Fair, 
held  first  in  1834.  Beginning  modestly,  this  grew  to 
be  an  institution  of  considerable  proportions,  and  for 
some  years  was  held  in  Faneuil  Hall.  Subscriptions 
to  the  Antislavery  Standard  were  received,  and  for 
fifteen  years  the  successive  editions  of  The  Liberty  Bell 


THE   SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION     267 

were  on  sale.  For  this  annual,  constructed  in  the 
prevailing  mode  of  its  period,  Mrs.  Chapman  secured 
contributions  from  the  foremost  writers  of  America 
and  England  whose  pens  yielded  anything  to  the  anti- 
slavery  cause.  This  was  a  company,  with  Whittier 
and  Lowell  at  its  head,  which  gave  the  annual  a  per- 
manent interest  and  value.  From  the  fairs  in  general, 
the  cause  derived,  not  only  financial  benefit,  but  also 
the  strength  which  comes  from  joining  an  enterprise 
in  the  pubHc  mind  with  the  disinterested  work  of  good 
women. 

To  this  feminine  support  must  be  added  even  a 
stronger  influence — the  working  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
spirit  of  fair  play.  The  cause  of  antislavery  certainly 
owed  much  to  its  opponents.  When  the  weaker  party 
to  any  contention  becomes  a  victim  to  browbeating 
and  insult,  it  does  not  take  long  for  latent  sympathy 
to  grow  into  active  partisanship.  The  case  of  Dr. 
Henry  Ingersoll  Bowditch  is  typical.  He  sees  the 
Garrison  mob,  and  immediately  resolves,  "  I  am  an 
abolitionist  from  this  very  moment,  and  to-morrow 
I  will  subscribe  for  Garrison's  Liberator y  In  the 
following  year,  1836,  new  strength  was  gained  through 
the  treatment  accorded  the  abolitionists  by  a  committee 
of  the  Massachusetts  legislature.  Governor  Everett  in 
his  annual  address  had  encouraged  action  upon  the  de- 
mand of  several  Southern  states  for  the  suppression  of 
the  abolitionists.  To  the  committee  appointed  to  con- 
sider the  matter  came  the  abolitionists  to  argue  against 
such  action.     One  of  them  ventured  to  allude  to  the 


268  BOSTON 

Garrison  mob  as  the  result  of  the  Faneuil  Hall  meet- 
ing of  conservatives,  and  was  promptly  ruled  out  of 
order.  Thus  at  every  turn  the  abolitionists  felt  them- 
selves unfairly  treated ;  and  many  of  the  spectators 
agreed  with  them.  Here  it  was  that  Channing,  whose 
recent  pamphlet  on  slavery  had  by  no  means  satisfied 
the  Garrisonians,  was  seen  shaking  hands  with  Garri- 
son. "  Righteousness  and  peace  have  kissed  each 
other,"  whispered  Mrs.  Chapman  to  her  neighbor, 
httle  thinking  that  Channing  would  subsequently  spoil 
her  mot  by  saying  that  he  did  not  know  at  the  time 
who  Garrison  was.  Nevertheless  the  powerful  influ- 
ence of  Channing,  hitherto  out  of  sympathy  with 
abolitionist  methods,  lent  itself  more  and  more  from 
this  time  forth  to  the  general  cause  of  antislavery. 
Possibly  the  words  of  Samuel  J.  May,  protesting  with 
him  for  his  early  disapproval  of  the  Garrisonians,  con- 
tinued to  ring  in  his  ears  :  "  We  abolitionists,"  said 
May,  "  are  what  we  are  —  babes,  sucklings,  obscure 
men,  silly  women,  publicans,  sinners,  and  we  shall 
manage  this  matter  just  as  might  be  expected  of  such 
persons  as  we  are.  It  is  unbecoming  abler  men  who 
stood  by  and  would  do  nothing  to  complain  of  us, 
because  we  do  no  better."  It  is  evident,  however, 
that  the  pews  to  which  Channing  preached  did  not 
immediately  follow  him.  On  a  Sunday  soon  after  the 
meeting  of  Garrison  and  Channing  at  the  State  House, 
Mrs.  Chapman,  at  Garrison's  wish,  took  him  to  hear 
Channing  preach.  They  sat  in  a  pew,  the  use  of 
which  had  been  offered  by  the  owner  to  Mrs.  Chap- 


THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     269 


man  and  her  family.  From  this  owner  Mrs.  Chapman 
received  a  note  on  the  next  day  putting  an  end  to  her 
privilege.  If  she  could  bring  Garrison  with  her, 
whom  might  she  not  bring  next  ?  During  Garrison's 
visit  to  England  he  had  _ 
received  what  seemed 
to  him  a  great  compli- 
ment, in  that  certain 
persons  invited  to  meet 
him  expected  to  see  a 
negro.  That  he  was 
treated  like  one  in  Bos- 
ton we  are  reminded 
by  what  did  happen  to 
a  negro  at  the  Park 
Street  Church.  It  is 
told  that  in  the  course 
of  trading  with  a  white 
man  a  negro  came 
fairly  into  possession 
of  a  pew  in  the  central 
aisle  of  that  church.  One  Sunday  he  occupied  it  with 
his  family  —  and  one  Sunday  only ;  for  besides  pro- 
voking the  inhospitable  frowns  of  the  congregation, 
his  presence  led  the  trustees  to  scrutinize  his  title  to 
the  pew,  with  the  result  that  a  technicality  was  found, 
sufficient  to  dispossess  him.  It  needed  only  cases 
enough  of  this  kind  to  win  for  both  negro  and  aboli- 
tionist an  army  of  friends  inspired  with  the  proverbial 
zeal  of  converts. 


Maria  Weston  Chapman. 

Daguerreotype  in  possession  of  the  Boston 
Public  Library. 


270  BOSTON 

The  winning  of  friends  was  not  accomplished  by 
local  causes  only.  When  a  proslavery  mob  threw  an 
antislavery  printing  outfit  into  the  Ohio  or  Mississippi, 
the  Boston  abolitionists  gained  more  than  they  lost. 
Especially  was  the  feehng  in  Boston  about  the  killing 
of  the  Rev.  Elijah  P.  Lovejoy  at  Alton,  Illinois,  in 
November  of  1837,  turned  to  good  account  by  the 
opponents  of  slavery.  By  this  time  Channing  was 
sufficiently  identified  with  their  cause  to  head  the  list 
of  petitioners  for  the  use  of  Faneuil  Hall  to  denounce 
this  murder.  The  Aldermen  denied  the  petition  on 
the  ground  that  a  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  was  under- 
stood in  other  places  to  represent  public  opinion  in 
Boston,  and  that  the  resolutions  this  meeting  would 
surely  pass  would  give  a  false  impression.  Many  were 
indignant  that  the  "  cradle  of  liberty  "  should  be  with- 
held from  an  exercise  so  obviously  of  free  speech. 
Channing  himself  issued  an  address  to  the  people  of 
Boston,  calling  for  a  reversal  of  the  Aldermen's  deci- 
sion. Public  sentiment  demanded  the  granting  of  the 
antislavery  petition,  and  it  was  granted. 

This  Lovejoy  meeting  is  particularly  to  be  noted 
for  bringing  into  prominence  two  names  then  new  to 
the  antislavery  cause,  but  later  inseparable  from  it  — 
the  names  of  Quincy  and  Phillips.  The  signature  of 
Edmund  Quincy  appeared  on  the  first  call  for  the 
Faneuil  Hall  meeting.  Twenty-nine  years  old,  a  son 
of  the  President  of  Harvard  College  who  had  been 
mayor  of  Boston,  belonging  to  none  of  the  classes  in 
May's    catalogue  of  abolitionists,  endowed  with   un- 


THE   SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION     271 


usual  gifts  as  a  writer,  he  had  much  to  bring  to  the 
cause.  He  brought  it  largely  in  the  form  of  contribu- 
tions to  the  antislavery  press,  standing  later  by  the 
side  of  his  intimate  fellow- 
worker,  James  Russell 
Lowell,  amongst  the  most 
effective  and  prolific  writ- 
ers for  the  Standard,  His 
kinsman,  Wendell  Phil- 
lips, son  of  the  first,  as 
Quincy  was  of  the  sec- 
ond, mayor  of  Boston, 
made  his  debut  upon  the 
antislavery  stage  at  the 
Lovejoy  meeting  itself 
Again  an  opponent  of 
reform  blazed  the  path 
for  the  new  reformer. 
James  T.  Austin,  Attor- 
ney-general of  Massa- 
chusetts, declared,  in 
antagonism  to  the  anti- 
slavery  speakers  of  the 
occasion,  that  Lovejoy 
had  merely  "  died  as  the 
fool  dieth,"  and  likened  the  liberation  of  slaves  to 
the  turning  loose  of  all  the  wild  and  silly  beasts  in 
the  Boston  menagerie.  To  many  of  the  audience  this 
was  welcome  doctrine,  and  their  tumult  for  a  time 
seemed  likely  to  drown  the  rejoinder  which  Wendell 


Wendell  Phillips. 


272  BOSTON 

Phillips  hastened  to  make.  But  the  handsome,  vehe- 
ment young  lawyer  would  not  be  stilled ;  and  this 
maiden  speech  in  the  cause  to  which  many  years  of  his 
life  were  to  be  given  foreshadowed  his  distinguished 
place  amongst  American  orators.  "  That  speech," 
wrote  John  Murray  Forbes  —  a  power,  as  will  be 
seen,  worth  winning — "changed  my  whole  feeling 
with  regard  to  it  [slavery],  though  the  bigotry  and 
pigheadedness  of  the  abolitionists  prevented  my  acting 
with  them."  • 

Corresponding  to  the  influence  exerted  on  individ- 
uals by  violent  word  and  act  on  behalf  of  slavery  was 
the  effect  produced  upon  political  and  moral  thought 
in  general  by  the  growth  of  the  slave  power  in  national 
afl^airs.  The  Liberator  and  the  abolitionists  may  well 
have  contributed  to  this  growth  by  exciting  the  South 
to  a  more  aggressive  maintenance  of  its  own  institution. 
In  1844  Garrison  and  his  fellow-radicals,  non-resistants 
and  non-voters  from  the  first,  went  so  far  as  to  advo- 
cate disunion  between  the  free  and  the  slave  states. 
The  urging  of  these  extreme  measures  had  far  less 
influence  on  the  public  mind,  however,  than  such 
victories  for  the  slave-power  as  the  annexation  of 
Texas  and  the  Mexican  war,  events  which  brought 
the  North  face  to  face  with  the  problem  of  extending 
or  limiting  the  system  of  slavery.  The  very  problem 
helped  to  bring  its  own  solution,  for  it  drew  upon  it- 
self just  such  lights,  for  example,  as  Lowell  in  his 
Biglow  Papers  hastened  to  throw  upon  the  questions  at 
issue.     In   1850  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  was  passed, 


THE    SLAVE    AND    THE    UNION     273 

with  the  help  of  Webster's  overpowering  influence. 
His  Seventh  of  March  speech,  in  which  he  gave  his 
cordial  support  to  the  measure,  was  received  in  Boston 
with  sentiments  ranging  from  those  of  Whittier's 
Ichabod  to  the  cordial  approbation  expressed  in  an 
address  of  welcome  delivered  by  Benjamin  R.  Curtis 
in  front  of  the  Revere  House  when  Webster  came  to 
Boston  in  April.  A  similar  expression  of  local  senti- 
ment was  a  letter  expressing  the  satisfaction  with  which 
its  eight  hundred  signers,  including  Rufus  Choate, 
Ticknor,  Prescott,  Col.  T.  H.  Perkins,  President 
Sparks,  and  others  of  distinction,  viewed  the  services 
of  Webster  in  bringing  "  the  present  crisis  in  our 
national  affairs  to  a  fortunate  and  peaceful  termination." 
It  was  Ticknor  —  we  may  note  in  passing  —  who 
wrote  two  years  later  to  a  Canadian  friend  about  Uncle 
Torn  s  Cabin  :  "  But  of  one  thing  you  may  be  sure.  It 
will  neither  benefit  the  slaves  nor  advance  the  slave 
question  one  iota  toward  its  solution."  Between 
Ticknor  on  the  one  hand  —  from  whose  immediate 
circle  such  men  as  Sumner,  R.  H.  Dana,  Jr.,  and 
Dr.  Bowditch  were  ostracized  by  reason  of  their  anti- 
slavery  sentiments  —  and  the  extreme  Garrisonians  on 
the  other,  there  was  a  wide  territory.  It  was  the  en- 
forcing of  the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  which  brought  the 
people  of  this  region  into  active  antagonism  to  slavery. 
There  was  abundant  reason  for  the  opponents  of 
the  Fugitive  Slave  Law  to  fear  its  operations  in  Boston. 
The  law  required  the  return  of  escaped  slaves,  no  mat- 
ter how  long  they  had  been  out  of  bondage.     On  the 

T 


274  BOSTON 

northern  slope  of  Beacon  Hill  many  of  these  fugitives 
had  been  settled  long  enough  to  have  acquired  a  sense 
of  security.  It  was  to  be  expected  that  in  the  city  of 
Garrison  and  The  Liberator  the  slave-owners  would 
take  a  special  pleasure  in  recovering  their  human  prop- 
erty. At  the  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  which  denounced 
the  new  law  —  there  was  of  course  another  to  commend 
it  —  the  Boston  negroes  were  encouraged  to  stay  where 
they  were,  with  the  promise  that  white  friends  would 
guard  them  against  the  fate  they  feared.  This  was  not 
an  easy  promise  to  keep. 

In  one  of  the  earliest  conspicuous  cases  under  the 
law,  the  negroes  managed  their  own  affair.  A  black 
man,  working  under  the  name  of  Shadrach  in  a  coffee- 
house in  Cornhill,  was  arrested  in  February  of  1851. 
The  jails  and  officials  of  Massachusetts  being  exempt 
under  a  state  law  from  any  dealings  with  fugitive  slaves 
as  such,  Shadrach  was  confined  in  the  United  States 
Court-room  to  await  his  trial  before  the  United  States 
Commissioner.  From  this  confinement  a  mob  of 
negroes  forcibly  rescued  him,  and  sent  him  rejoicing 
on  his  way  to  Canada,  where  he  was  soon  safe  from 
rendition.  No  such  good  fortune  was  in  store  for 
Thomas  Sims,  another  fugitive  arrested  in  April  of 
1 85 1.  He  too  was  imprisoned  in  the  Court  House, 
which  the  authorities,  fearing  another  rescue,  sur- 
rounded with  chains.  With  him  the  law  took  its 
course.  He  was  evidently  a  fugitive,  yet  when  his 
owner's  case  was  won,  it  was  thought  prudent  to  have 
Sims  leave  the  Court  House  at  five  in  the  morning. 


THE    SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION     275 

and   march,   surrounded   by  three    hundred   police   in 
hollow  square,  to  the  vessel  which  bore  him  to  Savan- 
nah.    That  day  the  funeral  bells  were  tolled  in  Boston. 
Before  the  last  and  most  important  of  all  the  fugitive 
slave  cases  —  that  of  Anthony  Burns  in  1854  —  events 
had  done  still  more  to  strengthen  the  antislavery  senti- 
ment.   Charles  Sumner,  a  member  of  the  United  States 
Senate  from  December  of  185 1,  stood  before  the  coun- 
try as  the  embodi-       /^  ^^       /^ 
ment  of  somethmg      c/*-»^  «-*-*.*-*-«-    ^ 
in  Massachusetts     ^fel    o£  t^w^T^-'^W  ^      '^  - 
widely  different  from      ^.^^^^  c^    <^  <^    /^-,^i^ 
that  which  Webster                           -^    ^^       ^        /^ 
represented.     Radi-       ^-^^^      "^"^^   V 
cal  of  thought,  mer-        4^   ^?j2SlJi>u^  cL  cT^tr^   /^^^k^^ 
ciless  of  speech,  he         ^  ^^^^    ,^v^^ 
felt  behind  him  the         I                    T^  *         /» 
moral,    rather    than                           CT^u^H^  yOl^^^H. 
the  social  and  com-      ^ 
mercial  forces  of  his            ^^        * ^^ 
state.      Amongst 

thinking  persons,  in  their  turn,  the  principle  of  resist- 
ance to  the  constituted  authorities,  when  abstract  right 
seemed  to  require  it,  was  steadily  gaining  ground. 
Through  the  effective  workings  of  the  Underground 
Railway  system,  to  cite  a  single  example,  this  principle 
expressed  itself  in  Boston  as  throughout  the  North  — 
and  the  law  was  steadily  defied.  Not  only  the  rank 
and  file,  but  men  of  leading  and  of  education  found 
themselves  in  the  unaccustomed  place  of  law-breakers. 


276 


BOSTON 


When  it  was  feared  that  the  fugitive  Crafts,  married  by 
Theodore  Parker  during  their  stay  in  Boston,  would  be 
captured  and  returned  to  slavery.  Dr.  H.  I.  Bowditch, 
having  occasion  to  drive  Craft  to  Brookline  one  Sun- 
day, carried  a  loaded  pistol  in  one  hand  ready  to  repel 


Old  Court  House,  Court  Square. 

slave-catchers.  While  the  two  fugitives  had  the  pro- 
tection of  Theodore  Parker's  house  before  they  were 
sent  to  England,  he  wrote  his  sermons  at  a  desk  in 
which  a  drawn  sword  and  a  pistol  lay  ready  for  instant 
use.  Almost  as  a  part  of  the  marriage  ceremony,  he 
gave  the  pair  a  Bible  apiece  and  a  bowie-knife,  for  de- 
fence of  soul  and  body.  These  typical  instances  of  the 
antislavery  readiness  to  fight  if  necessary  point  to  the 
condition  which  could  not  but  follow  the  Southern  vic- 
tory in  the  passage  of  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Bill  in  1854. 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     277 

More  than  to  any  other  single  cause,  perhaps,  it  was 
due  to  this  measure  that  the  "Burns  riot"  had  so 
different  a  purpose  from  that  of  the  "  Garrison  mob," 
and  that  the  rendition  of  Burns  was  so  much  greater  a 
tragedy  in  the  view  of  Boston  than  the  rendition  of 
Sims,  three  years  earlier. 

On  May  24,  1854,  Anthony  Burns,  a  recent  fugitive 
from  slavery,  was  arrested  in  Boston.  Through  the 
mediation  of  Theodore  Parker  he  was  induced  to 
accept  the  legal  services  of  Richard  Henry  Dana,  Jr., 
in  his  defence.  His  extra-legal  defence  was  immedi- 
ately undertaken  by  the  antislavery  "  Vigilance  Com- 
mittee." A  small  sub-committee,  including  Wendell 
Phillips,  Theodore  Parker,  Samuel  G.  Howe,  and 
Thomas  Wentworth  Higginson,  set  about  devising  a 
plan  for  the  rescue  of  Burns.  At  the  last  moment  it 
was  decided  to  stampede  a  public  meeting  to  be  held 
in  Faneuil  Hall  on  Friday  evening.  May  26,  and  direct 
its  whole  physical  force,  after  its  righteous  indignation 
was  aroused,  against  the  Court  House,  where  Burns 
was  confined.  In  Colonel  Higginson's  own  words, 
"  It  was  one  of  the  very  best  plots  that  ever  —  failed." 
The  Faneuil  Hall  meeting  was  large,  to  the  point  of 
unwieldiness.  Mr.^ Higginson,  and  a  few  supporters, 
were  ready  to  lead  the  attack  upon  the  Court  House, 
when  the  reenforcement  of  friends  should  arrive  from 
Faneuil  Hall.  The  signal  for  the  stampede  was 
imperfectly  understood  by  Phillips,  Parker,  and  Howe, 
and  the  intended  leaders  were  among  the  last  to  reach 
the  Court  House.     There,  meanwhile,  an  official  had 


278  BOSTON 

locked  the  main  door;  and  Mr.  Higginson  with  a  few 
others  began  battering  the  west  door  with  a  joist. 
When  it  gave  way,  it  admitted  the  attacking  party 
merely  into  the  arms  of  a  band  of  policemen,  who  plied 
their  clubs  with  such  zeal  that  further  progress  was  out 
of  the  question.  In  the  scrimmage  a  shot  was  fired 
which  killed  one  of  the  marshal's  deputies.  Here 
was  the  tragic  note.  Over  against  it  may  be  set  the 
appearance  a  few  moments  later  of  the  imperturbable 
Alcott  at  the  stairway  guarded  by  armed  deputy  mar- 
shals. "  Why  are  we  not  within  ?  "  asked  the  sage. 
In  the  blame  which  Mr.  Higginson's  answer  laid  upon 
those  who  had  failed  to  render  support  the  failure  of 
the  whole  venture  was  involved.  For  all  its  futility  it 
had  not  failed  to  demonstrate  that  scholars,  clergymen, 
and  philanthropists  were  ready  on  occasion  to  resist  the 
slave-power  vi  et  armis^  as  vigorously  as  the  "gentlemen 
of  property  and  standing"  nineteen  years  before  had 
assailed  the  advocate  of  emancipation.  The  wholesale 
reversal  of  familiar  standards  was  suggested  by  the  com- 
ment on  Mr.  Higginson  in  Dana's  diary  the  day  after 
the  riot :  "  I  knew  his  ardor  and  courage,  but  I  hardly 
expected  a  married  man,  a  clergyman,  and  a  man  of 
education  to  lead  the  mob." 

On  the  Monday  after  the  Burns  riot,  the  fugitive's 
trial  began.  Fearing  further  trouble  the  authorities 
had  the  Court  House  fairly  garrisoned  with  soldiers 
and  police.  Dana  fervently  pleaded  the  prisoner's 
case,  but  though  technicalities  might  have  set  him  free, 
he  was  evidently  the  claimant's  slave,  and  on  June  i 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     279 

the  United  States  Commissioner,  Edward  G.  Loring, 
rendered  a  verdict  in  the  owner's  favor.  It  is  a  signifi- 
cant footnote  to  the  history  of  the  time  that  the  women 
of  a  neighboring  town  promptly  sent  Loring  thirty 
pieces  of  silver,  of  the  smallest  denomination  minted. 
In  an  antislavery  daily  paper  objection  was  made 
"even  to  the  addition  of  ninety  cents  to  the  legal  fee  of 
ten  dollars  which  Loring  has  received  for  his  inhuman 
job."  So  much  of  local  sympathy  went  out  to  the 
surrendered  slave  that  little  was  left  for  the  official  who 
administered  the  law.  If  it  was  difficult  to  protect 
Burns  within  the  Court  House,  the  problem  of  getting 
him  on  board  the  revenue  cutter  which  should  bear  him 
away  was  far  more  perplexing.  The  show  of  force 
was  the  surest  measure  of  safety.  Dr.  Bowditch  saw 
his  removal,  and  has  thus  described  it :  "  In  full  broad 
daylight,  in  the  middle  of  the  day,  in  front  of  the 
assembled  merchant  princes  of  State  Street,  with  a 
right  royal  cortege  of  two  companies  of  United  States 
troops,  and  cannon  loaded  with  grape,  and  all  the  mili- 
tary of  SuffiDlk  County,  the  poor  slave  was  escorted,  as 
with  royal  splendor,  to  the  end  of  Long  Wharf."  But 
the  splendor  was  all  in  the  procession,  not  in  its  sur- 
roundings. Shops  and  offices  were  closed  and  draped 
in  black.  Flags  with  the  union  down  were  hung 
across  State  Street.  Swinging  in  air  near  the  Old 
State  House  hung  a  huge  coffin,  bearing  the  legend, 
"  The  funeral  of  liberty."  Hisses  and  cries  of 
"  Shame  !  Shame  !  "  met  the  procession  throughout 
its  line   of  march.     A  brother  of  a   member   of  the 


28o  BOSTON 

Corps  of  Cadets,  later  a  distinguished  officer  in  the 
Civil  War,  tells  the  story  that  when  this  young  soldier 
came  home  at  evening,  he  flung  himself  down  and  cried 
like  a  child  for  very  sorrow  at  the  part  his  military 
duty  had  forced  him  to  play  in  that  day's  work.  The 
sense  of  defeat  and  shame  was  bitter  throughout  the 
community.  Even  at  the  South  there  were  those  who 
saw  their  victory  as  the  British  had  seen  the  winning 
of  Bunker  Hill.  "  We  rejoice  at  the  recapture  of 
Burns,"  wrote  a  Southern  editor,  quoted  by 'Mr.  J.  F. 
Rhodes,  "  but  a  few  more  such  victories  and  the  South 
is  undone." 

It  was  not  foreseen  at  the  time  of  the  rendition  of 
Burns  that  after  him  no  slave  would  be  sent  from 
Boston  back  to  slavery.  Accordingly  the  friends  of 
the  slave  made  ready  to  prevent  a  repetition  of  the 
Sims  and  Burns  affairs.  Their  organization,  fully  de- 
scribed in  the  Life  of  Dr.  Bowditch,  was  called  the 
Anti-Man-Hunting  League.  Its  plan  was  to  affiliate 
lodges  in  Boston  and  throughout  the  state  with  the 
purpose  of  seizing  slave-hunters  who  would  not  for  a 
consideration  give  freedom  to  their  fugitives.  In  the 
event  of  refusal,  the  slave-hunter  was  to  be  kidnapped 
and  sent  to  one  out-of-town  lodge  after  another.  In 
the  smaller  cities  and  towns  of  Massachusetts,  it  should 
be  remembered,  a  more  united  antislavery  feeling  was 
generally  to  be  found  than  in  Boston.  For  the  seizure 
of  the  slave-hunter  a  definite  drill  was  practised.  A 
sturdy  member  was  chosen  to  represent  the  enemy, 
and  a  committee  was  appointed  to  kidnap  him.    Arms, 


Ip-^ti^ 


Old  State  House,  State  Street. 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     283 

legs,  and  head,  were  assigned  to  this,  that,  and  the 
other  member.  The  meetings  of  the  League  were  in 
effect  rehearsals  of  seizure,  in  which,  despite  the 
strength  of  the  muscular  corpus  vile,  the  kidnappers 
acquired  great  proficiency.  The  point  of  significance 
in  the  record  of  the  League  is  that  the  kidnappers 
were  not  ruffians  but  men  of  refinement  and  orderly 
tradition. 

Of  kindred  service  in  the  cause  of  emancipation 
Boston  stood  ready  to  give  its  generous  share  to 
"  bleeding  Kansas,"  after  the  Kansas-Nebraska  Law 
permitted  the  settlers  in  these  territories  to  determine 
by  their  votes  whether  the  two  new  states  should  be 
slave  or  free.  The  New  England  Emigrant  Aid 
Society  was  well  within  the  law  in  smoothing  the  path 
of  emigrants  who  might  be  expected  to  vote  against 
slavery.  In  Bishop  Lawrence's  Life  of  his  father, 
Amos  A.  Lawrence,  it  may  be  seen  how  freely  money 
and  sympathy  flowed  to  Kansas  from  sources  hitherto 
strongly  conservative.-  There  is  a  fine  flavor  of 
romance,  moreover,  in  the  picture  of  the  first  party, 
twenty-nine  strong,  singing  as  the  train  rolled  out  of 
Boston,  Whittier's  words  to  the  tune  of  "Auld  Lang 
Syne"  :  — 

"We  cross  the  prairie  as  of  old 

The  pilgrims  crossed  the  sea. 
To  make  the  West,  as  they  the  East, 

The  homestead  of  the  free  ! ' ' 

Though  private  members  of  the  Emigrant  Aid 
Society    sent    rifles    to    the    settlers  —  some    thirteen 


284  BOSTON 

hundred  in  all — there  were  frequent  injunctions 
against  using  these  arms  to  resist  United  States 
authority.  The  cause  of  Kansas,  however,  grew  to 
be  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  its  chief  supporters  the 
cause  of  John  Brown.  The  rifles  conveyed  to  him 
under  the  borrowed  name  of  "  hardware  "  were  pro- 
vided by  men  who  did  not  ask  too  many  questions, 
and  later  would  have  joined  heartily  in  John  A. 
Andrew's  declaration,  "  Whatever  might  be  thought 
of  John  Brown's  acts,  John  Brown  himselPwas  right." 
Here  again,  amongst  the  Boston  men  who  stood 
nearest  to  Brown,  were  those  who  in  common  times 
would  have  followed  all  the  paths  of  peace.  When 
war  came  they  were  of  those  who  stood  nearest  to 
Governor  Andrew.  From  the  hanging  of  John 
Brown  at  the  end  of  1859  ^^  ^^^  outbreak  of  the 
Civil  War,  the  interval  was  brief,  both  in  time  and 
in  the  change  of  spirit  which  the  less  timid  were 
obliged  to  undergo.  , . 

It  was  only  four  months  before  the  fall  of  Sumter, 
however,  that  Tremont  Temple  was  the  scene  of  a 
conservative  demonstration  almost  as  violent  as  the 
"  Garrison  mob."  The  anniversary  of  the  death  of 
John  Brown  was  chosen  as  the  occasion  for  a  meeting, 
called  chiefly  by  young  men,  including  Mr.  F.  B. 
Sanborn  of  Concord,  to  discuss  the  question,  "  How 
can  Slavery  be  abolished  ?  "  The  powerful  element 
in  Boston  which  even  at  this  eleventh  hour  believed 
that  Slavery  should  be  let  alone  packed  the  meeting, 
with   mahce   aforethought.     An   eye-witness    thus   de- 


THE   SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     285 


scribed  the  intruders  :  "  They  looked  like  the  frequent- 
ers of  State  Street,  and  of  the  avenues  of  wholesale 
trade  in  cotton  goods.  They  resembled  the  famous 
mob  of  1835,  of  which  I  also  was  a  witness."  Mr. 
Sanborn,  Frederick  Douglass,  and  others  who  at- 
tempted to  speak  were  shouted  down.  A  new  chair- 
man was  tumultuously  chosen,  and  resolutions  were 
passed  condemning  John  Brown's  "piratical  and 
bloody "  work,  and  thanking  Virginia  for  the  con- 
servative spirit  it  had  manifested.  Constant  coUisions 
between  the  rival  forces  took  place,  the  police  con- 
tributing their  own  element  of  confusion.  A  more 
complete  upsetting  of 
the  plans  for  the  meet- 
ing could  hardly  have 
been  achieved.  Such 
was  the  effect  upon 
the  municipal  author- 
ities that  in  January 
of  1 861  the  mayor 
refused  police  protec- 
tion in  a  hall  hired  for 
an  antislavery  meet- 
ing. It  was  at  this 
time  that  Wendell 
Phillips,  walking  to 
and  from  the  Music 
Hall,  where  he  was  addressing  Theodore  Parker's 
Sunday  congregations,  had  to  be  shielded  by  a  body- 
guard against  the  crowd  that  followed  him ;  and  for 


Tablet  at  Corner  of  Essex  Street 
AND  Harrison  Avenue  Extension. 


286  BOSTON 

many  nights  his  house  was  similarly  protected  from 
violence.  In  moments  of  discouragement  the  anti- 
slavery  workers  might  well  have  questioned  the  local 
value  of  their  thirty  years'  labor. 

To  describe  with  anything  like  completeness  the 
years  before  the  war  in  Boston  would  be  to  write 
much  about  Theodore  Parker  as  the  fiery  apostle  of 
antislavery.  The  conservatives  who  regarded  his 
theology  with  horror  could  not  admire  the  taste  and 
discretion  of  many  of  his  words  and  deeds:  The  ser- 
mon, for  example,  preached  on  the  Sunday  after 
Webster's  death,  and  characterized  by  Mr.  Rhodes  as 
"indecent,"  was  possibly  even  more  obnoxious  to 
respectable  local  sentiment  than  his  cavalier  treatment 
of  miracles  ten  years  earlier.  Yet  the  influence  of  his 
spoken  and  printed  word  was  far-reaching.  It  is  told, 
even,  that  Lincoln's  law-partner,  Herndon,  carried 
from  Boston  to  Illinois  pamphlet  sermons  by  Parker, 
and  that  in  one  of  these  Lincoln  marked  with  his  pen- 
cil a  phrase  so  nearly  identical  with  his  "government 
of  the  people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people  "  that  to 
Parker  its  origin  must  fairly  be  attributed.  In  the 
complete  record,  also,  there  would  be  many  pages 
with  Webster  for  their  theme.  Against  an  imposing 
background  of  wealth  and  consideration  such  figures 
as  those  of  Edward  Everett,  Robert  C.  Winthrop, 
and  the  representatives  of  commercial  and  social  stabil- 
ity, would  move  with  dignity  by  Webster's  side.  Still 
more,  perhaps,  would  these  records  have  to  say  of 
Charles    Sumner,   chosen    by   Preston    S.    Brooks   of 


THE   SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION     287 


Charles  Sumner. 
Photograph  in  possession  of  F.  J.  Garrison,  Esq. 

South  Carolina  as  the  most  harassing  pubHc  foe 
of  slavery,  and  made  the  victim  of  that  assault  in  the 
Capitol  at  Washington  which  even  at  its  late  day  won, 
like  the  Dred  Scott  decision  a  year  later,  many  new 
friends  to  the  cause  at  which  both  blows  were  aimed. 
But  here,  as  before,  the  temptation  to  quit  the  field  of 


288  BOSTON 

local  for  that  of  national  history  must  be  resisted.  If 
the  two  fields  frequently  coincide,  at  least  it  is  well 
to  reserve  for  special  emphasis  the  points  at  which  the 
local  characteristics  are  most  marked.  For  this  reason 
the  thirty  years  before  the  war  have  been  more  care- 
fully regarded  —  though  all  too  cursorily  —  than  the 
years  of  civil  warfare  need  to  be. 

Indeed,  it  may  fairly  be  said  that  the  experiences  of 
Boston  throughout  these  years  of  doubt,  devotion,  and 
hope  were  essentially  the  experiences  of  all  Northern 
cities.  The  call  and  the  response  of  patriotic  feeling 
were  simultaneous.  When  Sumter  fell,  the  flags  broke 
forth  from  every  height  and  corner,  and  the  spirit  of 
the  people  was  in  them.  It  was  the  spirit  which 
breathed  through  the  vigorous  action  of  Governor 
Andrew.  On  Monday,  April  15,  1861,  came  Lin- 
coln's first  call  for  troops.  On  Tuesday  the  soldiers 
Andrew  had  been  preparing  for  this  very  emergency 
were  gathered  in  Boston.  On  Wednesday  three  regi- 
ments were  started  for  the  front,  the  Sixth  to  pass 
through  Baltimore.  Ten  days  later  Edward  Everett, 
the  recently  defeated  candidate  for  Vice-President  on 
one  of  the  tickets  arrayed  against  Lincoln,  declared : 
"All  former  difi^erences  of  opinion  are  swept  away. 
We  forget  that  we  ever  have  been  partisans :  we  re- 
member only  that  we  are  Americans,  and  that  our 
country  is  in  peril."  This  was  the  dominant  feeling 
of  the  place.  Yet  it  was  the  union  rather  than  emanci- 
pation which  stirred  and  held  the  general  loyalty.  If 
in  these  early  days  of  the  war  there  were  doubters,  they 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     289 

indulged  their  doubts  in  secret.  Later  they  expressed 
themselves  more  freely,  as  at  the  time  of  McClellan's 
visit  to  Boston  when  the  war  was  two  years  old,  and 
the  Boston  fainthearts  feared  that  Lincoln  could  never 
end  it.  They  then  gave  McClellan  a  sword  with  a 
Latin  inscription  which  their  spokesman  translated, 
"  For  the  administration,  when  it  behaves  itself;  for 
the  country  always."  Of  the  small  class  which  was 
slowest  to  move  forward  with  the  time,  Mr.  Charles 
Francis  Adams  has  written  :  "  Even  when  there  was 
hardly  a  family  in  the  city  which  did  not  count  father, 
brother,  son,  or  husband  in  the  field,  talk  as  treason- 
able as  it  was  idle  was  daily  and  hourly  heard  in  the 
fashionable  clubhouse  of  Beacon  Street."  But  Mr. 
Adams  attaches  no  more  importance  to  this  talk  than 
the  vital  men  of  the  sixties  did,  in  Boston  and  other 
places  where  its  counterpart  was  heard.  None  the  less 
we  may  believe  that  Governor  Andrew's  secretary, 
Albert  G.  Browne,  recorded  a  fact  when  he  wrote : 
"  Many  a  gallant  young  officer  went  down  from 
Massachusetts  into  Virginia  to  battle,  an  unconscious 
hostage  for  the  loyalty  of  men  at  home  who  in  times 
of  disaster  might  otherwise  easily  have  fallen  into  indif- 
ference or  opposition."  Of  the  things  which  Northern 
cities  had  in  common,  it  is  of  greater  moment  to  recall 
those  which  most  truly  typified  the  time.  Here  was 
the  national  spirit  of  courageous  sacrifice,  whether  of 
life  or  of  those  who  made  life  most  dear.  Here,  as 
elsewhere,  the  regiments  marched  away,  the  women 
dried  their  tears,  waited  and  worked,  as  that  great 
u 


290 


BOSTON 


agency  of  good,  the  Sanitary  Commission,  enabled 
them  to  work,  for  the  comforting  of  the  boys  at  the 
front.  Here  the  news  of  battles  brought  the  griefs 
and  joys  which  came  with  a  common  vividness  to  North 
and  South.  Here,  in  a  word,  the  war-time  generation 
lived  those  years  of  reahty  which  have  made  so  many 

of  our  later  days  seem  trivial 
and  pale. 

It  would  have  been  strange, 
however,  if  the  )fears  before 
the  war  had  borne  no  dis- 
tinctive local  fruits.  Since 
war  was  to  come,  the  place 
was  fortunate  in  having  men 
of  authority  who  had  profited 
by  the  vigorous  thought  and 
action  of  the  antislavery  pe- 
riod. Chief  among  these 
stood  John  Albion  Andrew, 
the  war  governor,  whose  im- 
mediate response  to  Lincoln's  first  call  for  troops  was 
typical  of  his  leadership  of  Massachusetts  throughout 
his  five  years  in  office.  To  his  more  radical  anti- 
slavery  friends,  and  to  those  who,  like  John  Murray 
Forbes,  had  the  scantest  patience  with  the  abolition- 
ists. Governor  Andrew  turned  for  the  help  he  sorely 
needed.  From  the  Pen  Portraits  of  "  Warrington '' 
(Wilham  S.  Robinson)  it  is  worth  while  to  repro- 
duce a  picture  of  Mr.  Forbes  in  the  war-time,  "  more 
than    any    other    man,    the    confidential    adviser    and 


Governor  Andrew. 


THE    SLAVE   AND    THE    UNION     291 

helper  of  Governor  Andrew.  He  attends  to  every- 
thing, writes  letters,  raises  money  (liberally  contribut- 
ing himself),  sends  messages  to  Washington  to  direct 
and  organize  congressional  opinion,  makes  or  persuades 
editors  to  write  leading  articles  to  enforce  his  views, 
hunts  up  members  of  Congress  in  vacation  time,  dines 
them  at  the  club,  and  sends  them  back  full  of  practical 
suggestions,  which  reappear  in  bills  and  resolves  the 
month  after."  In  the  allusion  here  made  to  editors, 
it  is  entirely  probable  that  the  work  of  the  New  Eng- 
land Loyal  Publication  Society  was  at  the  back  of  the 
writer^s  mind.  This  work  was  begun  in  Mr.  Forbes's 
office,  and  seemed  to  him  afterwards  his  best  contribu- 
tion to  the  Union  cause.  As  organized  and  carried 
out  by  Mr.  Charles  Eliot  Norton  and  James  B. 
Thayer,  subsequently  professor  in  the  Harvard  Law 
School,  it  consisted  in  sending  to  the  editors  of  some 
nine  hundred  newspapers  throughout  the  country 
broadside  sheets  containing  the  soundest  loyal  doctrine 
in  politics  and  finance  taken  from  the  best  speeches 
and  articles  of  the  day.  Reprinted  by  the  editors,  the 
contents  of  these  sheets  reached  approximately  a  mill- 
ion readers.  The  best  intelligence  of  the  place  thus 
gave  its  effective  service  to  a  great  democratic  purpose. 
But  of  all  the  good  work  in  which  Governor  Andrew 
and  Mr.  Forbes  were  associated,  that  which  stands  as 
the  fullest  flowering  of  thirty  years  of  antislavery 
agitation  in  Boston  was  the  raising  of  the  Fifty-fourth 
Regiment  of  Massachusetts  Infantry,  Colored.  This 
was  the  first  of  all  the  negro  regiments  raised  in  the 


292  BOSTON 

Northern  states.  From  the  outbreak  of  the  war  Gov- 
ernor Andrew  had  eagerly  wished  to  enlist  colored 
troops  ;  but  for  two  years  the  War  Department  with- 
held its  consent.  When  permission  was  finally  granted, 
it  became  a  point  of  pride  with  the  Governor  to  show 
the  country  that  Massachusetts  was  ready  to  give  of 
its  best  to  the  work,  coldly  regarded  by  many  at  the 
North  and  detested  through  the  South,  of  officering  a 
regiment  of  negroes.  His  choice  for  the  colonelcy 
fell  upon  young  Robert  Gould  Shaw,  an  officer  of  rare 
power,  charm,  and  promise,  who  was  already  winning 
himself  distinction  in  the  Second  Massachusetts. 
Turning  his  back  on  sure  advancement  there,  and 
doubtful  of  his  ability  to  command  the  new  regi- 
ment, he  gave  himself  heart  and  soul  to  the  trial. 
His  fellow-officers  were  of  gentle  birth  and  breeding 
like  his  own,  and  they  were  fellow-abolitionists.  In 
the  camp  at  Readville  the  spring  days  of  1863  were 
given  to  grounding  the  black  command  in  the  elements 
of  soldiery.  On  the  28th  of  May  they  took  steamer 
from  Boston  to  South  Carolina.  Let  Major  Henry 
L.  Higginson  bring  the  day  and  its  spirit  back  to  us : 
"  Can  you  see  those  brave  men  well-drilled  and  disci- 
plined, proud  of  themselves,  proud  of  their  handsome 
colonel  (he  was  only  twenty-six  years  old)  and  of  their 
gallant,  earnest  young  white  officers,  marching  through 
crowded  streets  in  order  to  salute  Governor  Andrew, 
their  true  friend,  standing  before  the  State  House  sur- 
rounded by  his  staff  of  chosen  and  faithful  aids ;  and 
then  once  more  marching  to   the  steamer  at  Battery 


THE    SLAVE   AND   THE    UNION     295 

Wharf,  while  thousands  of  men  and  women  cheered 
them  —  the  despised  race  —  to  the  echo  as  they  went 
forth  to  blot  out  with  their  own  blood  the  sin  of  the 
nation  ?  Every  negro  knew  that  he  ran  other  and 
greater  risks  than  the  soldiers  of  the  white  regiments  ; 
and  still  more,  every  one  of  those  white  officers  knew 
that  even  at  the  hands  of  many,  many  Northern  offi- 
cers and  men  he  would  not  receive  equal  treatment." 
In  less  than  two  months  the  regiment  led  the  attack 
upon  Fort  Wagner,  where  the  "  fair-haired  Northern 
hero  "  and  nearly  half  his  "  guard  of  dusky  hue  "  fell 
together  and  were  buried  in  a  common  trench. 

On  Memorial  Day  of  1897  the  Shaw  Monument, 
marking  the  scene  of  Andrew's  farewell  to  the  Fifty- 
fourth,  was  unveiled  and  presented  to  the  city  of 
Boston  —  a  piece  of  sculpture  which  led  the  mother 
of  Shaw  to  say  to  Mr.  Augustus  Saint  Gaudens,  its 
creator,  "  You  have  immortalized  my  native  city,  you 
have  immortalized  my  dear  son,  you  have  immortalized 
yourself."  In  accepting  the  gift  on  behalf  of  the  city, 
and  truly  interpreting  the  moment  which  the  bronze 
has  rendered  perpetual,  the  Hon.  Josiah  Quincy,  the 
third  mayor  of  his  name,  said  :  "  The  outward  and 
visible  sign  of  the  enfranchisement  of  a  race  was  here 
given  when  the  fugitive  slave,  transformed  into  a  soldier 
by  authority  of  a  liberty-loving  state,  went  forth  to  bear 
his  part  in  maintaining  the  union  of  the  nation  and 
winning  the  freedom  of  his  people."  Thus  it  is  that 
Shaw  and  his  men  typify  the  ending  of  the  work  which 
Garrison  began.     Garrison  was  the  voice,  and  Shaw  the 


296  BOSTON 

arm.  To  the  voice  —  to  Garrison  and  his  associates, 
says  Mr.  Rhodes,  it  was  due  that  slavery  became  a 
topic  of  discussion  at  every  Northern  fireside.  The 
voice  was  not  for  action,  political  or  physical,  so  long 
as  slavery  remained  a  part  of  the  national  system  under 
which  the  action  must  take  place.  It  was  this  aloof- 
ness, this  leaving  of  many  practical  labors  to  others, 
which  contributed  to  the  doubt  and  scorn  wherewith 
many  good  men,  as  hostile  to  slavery  as  Garrison  him- 
self, looked  upon  the  Garrisonians.  But  the  extremists 
had  their  work  to  do,  and  did  it.  So  did  the  less 
radical  perform  theirs,  with  votes,  through  parties, 
the  Liberty,  the  Free  Soil,  and  finally  the  Republican. 
It  was  no  small  part  of  their  work  to  bring  the  voice 
of  the  mere  reformer  and  the  arm  of  the  mere  soldier 
into  common  service  for  a  great  and  single  purpose. 
In  Boston  the  blending  elements  through  which  this 
purpose  was  fulfilled  must  be  remembered  so  long  as 
Garrison,  Sumner,  and  Shaw  rise  in  bronze  above  the 
daily  paths  of  citizenship. 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS 


T 


HE  monuments  of  a  city 
tell  much  of  its  story, 
for  in  them  the  men  whose 
lives  have  been  at  various  times 
the  dominant  lives  of  the  place 
are  kept  in  continual  memory. 
Stone  and  bronze  are  good 
reminders.  So,  too,  are  those 
other  monuments  which  take 
their  form  in  a  perpetual  hu- 
man activity  —  an  institution 
or  any  enrichment  of  man- 
kind —  through  which  the 
generous  spirit  of  a  founder, 
discoverer,  or  leader  is  typified 
for  generations  to  come.  Civic 
pride  does  a  valuable  work 
when  it  preserves  the  name  of 
a  man  together  with  the  good 
that  he  has  done.  The  public 
places  and  the  daily  life  of  Boston  are  full  of  me- 
morials of  citizens  who  have  helped  to  give  the  place 
its  individuality.  When  cast  in  the  form  of  bronze, 
these  memorials  are  of  widely  varying  artistic  merit.    A 

297 


Washington. 

By  Thomas  Ball,  in  the  Boston 
Public  Garden.    . 


298  BOSTON 

poor  statue,  as  we  know  too  well,  may  stand  for  the 
best  of  men  and  deeds.  To  recall  a  few  of  the  marked 
personages  and  achievements  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  Boston,  whether  the  monument  be  a  disappointment 
in  bronze  or  a  fulfilment  of  human  purpose,  is  the 
undertaking  of  the  present  chapter. 

The  names  of  Josiah  Quincy  and  Edward  Everett 
come  instantly  to  mind  as  representative  of  a  time 
which  has  passed  away,  —  a  time  in  which  the  most  emi- 
nent men  in  a  community  were  not,  as  noW,  the  great 
specialists  in  finance,  science,  politics,  or  the  arts,  but 
attained  an  all-round  development  which  had  more  in 
common  with  classic  than  with  modern  American 
standards.  Thus  when  Lowell  wrote  his  essay  on 
Josiah  Quincy  he  could  give  it,  and  its  subject,  no 
better  title  than  "  A  Great  Public  Character."  When 
Everett  was  called  "  The  First  Citizen  of  the  Republic," 
the  definition  went  unchallenged.  These  are  two  names 
which  cannot  be  ignored. 

Josiah  Quincy,  separable  as  president  of  Harvard 
College  from  others  of  his  name,  himself  the  son  of 
one  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  and  father  of  another,  who  was 
in  turn  the  grandfather  of  the  third  mayor  of  Boston 
bearing  the  same  name,  came  of  a  race  identified 
throughout  the  history  of  Massachusetts  with  public 
service.  The  dates  of  his  birth  and  death,  1772  and 
1864,  justify  Lowell's  sentence:  "The  same  eyes  that 
had  looked  on  Gage's  red-coats  saw  Colonel  Shaw's 
negro  regiment  march  out  of  Boston  in  the  national 
blue."    This  length  of  years  was  measured  almost  from 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS 


299 


end  to  end  by  the  fulfilment  of  public  duties.  Their 
variety  included  service  in  both  houses  of  the  General 
Court  of  Massachusetts,  nine  years  in  the  national 
House  of  Repre- 
sentatives, where  he 
became  the  leader 
of  the  Federalist 
party,  five  years  in 
the  mayoralty  of 
Boston,  —  a  post  in 
which  his  only  pred- 
ecessor had  held 
office  for  a  single 
year,  leaving  to  the 
"  great  mayor  "  the 
chief  burden  of  or- 
ganizing the  new  city 
government,  —  and 
sixteen  years  in  the 
presidency  of  Har- 
vard. After  perform- 
ing a  large  service  of 
organization  for  the 
college  as  for  the  city, 
there  were  still  many  years  to  be  accounted  for.  All 
these  were  honorably  filled  by  labors  of  scholarship,  in 
history  and  biography,  by  active  interest  in  whatever 
concerned  the  good  of  his  city  and  country,  and  by 
the  pursuits  of  a  farmer  and  gentleman  of  the  school 
to  which   the   definition  "  old "   must  be    reluctantly 


JOSIAH   QUINCY. 

Miniature  by  Malbone,  in  possession  of 
J.  P.  Quincy,  Esq. 


300  BOSTON 

attached.  The  biography  of  Josiah  Quincy  by  his  son 
Edmund  gives  a  picture  of  unwearying  industry  and  a 
simple,  even  austere,  dignity  of  private  Hfe.  The  son 
cannot  refrain  from  giving  an  amusing  instance  of  the 
result  of  his  father's  practice  of  rising  at  four  o'clock 
every  morning.  "  This  excess  in  early  hours,"  says 
the  biographer,  "  like  every  other  excess,  brought  its 
penalty  along  with  it."  The  penalty  lay  in  falling 
asleep  through  the  hours  of  the  day.  John  Quincy 
Adams  indulged  the  same  excess.  Once  when  he  was 
visiting  President  Quincy  in  Cambridge,  the  two  at- 
tended a  lecture  of  Judge  Story  to  his  law  class.  The 
lecturer  placed  the  visitors  on  a  platform  facing  the 
students,  and  proceeded  with  his  lecture.  He  soon 
saw  that  they  were  both  sound  asleep,  and  that  his 
class  saw  it.  "  Pausing  a  moment  in  his  swift  career 
of  speech,  he  pointed  to  the  two  sleeping  figures,  and 
uttered  these  words  of  warning :  *  Gentlemen,  you  see 
before  you  a  melancholy  example  of  the  evil  effects  of 
early  rising ! '  "  The  laughter  of  the  class  awakened 
the  sleepers,  but  it  is  not  told  that  the  disaster  had  more 
than  a  momentary  effect  upon  either  of  them.  Indeed 
we  should  not  wish  to  see  any  changes  in  the  strongly 
individual  outlines  of  the  classic  figures  in  American 
life.  It  is  better  to  recall  them  in  that  completeness 
which  Motley  suggested  when  he  wrote  from  Vienna 
to  Edmund  Quincy  soon  after  the  death  of  his  venera- 
ble father:  "I  shall  borrow  the  expression  of  our 
friend  Wendell  Holmes  and  speak  of  him  as  the  type 
and  head  of  the  Brahmins  of  America.     A  scholar,  a 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  301 

gentleman,  descended  of  scholars  and  gentlemen,  a 
patriot  and  a  son  of  a  patriot,  well  known  to  all  who 
knew  America,  —  an  upright  magistrate,  an  eloquent 
senator,  a  fearless  champion  of  the  Right,  a  man  of  the 
world,  a  man  of  letters  and  a  sage,  with  a  noble  pres- 
ence from  youth  onwards,  which  even  in  extreme  old 
age  did  not  lose  its  majesty,  and  which  gave  a  living 
and  startling  contradiction  to  the  great  poet's  terrible 
picture  of  man's  ^  seventh  age,'  —  what  better  type 
could  those  of  us  w^ho  are  proud  of  America,  and  who 
believe  in  America,  possibly  imagine  ?  " 

It  was  in  a  letter  to  Motley  that  Dr.  Holmes 
likened  Edward  Everett  to  the  yardstick  by  which 
men  were  measured  in  Boston.  Even  more  than  his 
contemporary,  Josiah  Quincy,  Everett  left  a  record  of 
variety  in  achievement  which  makes  our  age  seem  an 
era  of  narrow  specialism.  An  application  of  the 
Everett  yardstick  would  reveal  a  striking  change  of 
standard  between  past  and  present  measures.  A  bare 
list  of  his  successive  labors  tells  the  story.  Graduat- 
ing at  the  head  of  his  class  at  Harvard  at  the  age  of 
seventeen,  he  was  made  a  tutor  in  the  college  the  next 
year.  Before  twenty  he  was  ordained  minister  of  the 
Brattle  Street  Church,  where  he  proved  himself  a  worthy 
successor  of  the  eloquent  Buckminster.  At  twenty  he 
was  chosen  professor  of  Greek  at  Harvard,  with  an 
unprecedented  four  years'  leave  of  absence  for  Euro- 
pean study.  After  his  return  he  added  the  duties  of 
editor  of  The  North  American  Review  to  those  of 
teaching.      From    1825    to    1835    ^^   ^^^  ^   member 


302 


BOSTON 


of  Congress.  This  term 
was  followed  by  four 
years,  ending  in  1840,  in 
the  governorship  of  Mas- 
sachusetts. The  next  year 
he  was  appointed  minis- 
ter to  the  Court  of  St. 
James.  Then  for  three 
years  from  1 846,  he  filled 
the  presidency  of  Harvard 
College,  the  immediate 
successor  of  Josiah  Quin- 
cy.  His  public  career  was 
rounded  out  after  Web- 
ster's death  by  holding 
the  posts  of  Secretary  of 
State,  under  Fillmore,  and 
of  Senator  from  Massa- 
chusetts. Against  his  per- 
sonal wishes  he  ran  for  the 
vice-presidency,  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  ticket  on 
which  Lincoln  was  first 
elected.  When  the  Civil 
War  broke  out  he  brought  the  best  gift  at  his  com- 
mand —  the  gift  of  oratory  —  to  the  service  of  the 
Union.  To  swell  the  fund  for  the  purchase  of  Mount 
Vernon  he  had  already  delivered  in  many  parts  of  the 
country  a  lecture  on  the  character  of  Washington,  in 
which  the  "  preservation  of  the  Union  of  these  States  " 


Edward  Everett. 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  303 

was  urged  with  all  his  ripened  power.  In  1861  he  pre- 
pared a  new  address  on  "  The  Causes  and  Conduct  of 
the  Civil  War."  Within  eight  months  from  its  first 
delivery  in  Boston,  on  October  16,  he  gave  it  in  most 
of  the  large  cities  outside  the  hostile  lines  —  no  less 
than  sixty  times  in  all.  In  1862  he  reached  his  sixty- 
eighth  year ;  but  bearing  the  burdens  of  age,  besides 
those  of  feeble  health  and  private  bereavement,  he 
went  about  this  public  business,  travelling  as  far  south 
and  west  as  St.  Louis.  When  he  died  in  January  of 
1865  this  unique  patriotic  service,  with  further  offer- 
ings of  oratory  up  to  the  very  week  before  his  death, 
was  freshly  remembered  by  his  countrymen. 

It  is  the  common  testimony  of  those  who  heard 
Everett  that  in  hearing  him  they  learned  the  meaning 
of  the  word  eloquence.  Distinction  in  the  waning  art 
of  oratory  demands  many  gifts,  of  which  a  retentive 
memory  is  not  the  least.  In  this  possession  Everett 
was  endowed  to  an  extent  which  relates  him  rather  to 
such  men  as  Macaulay  than  to  the  scholars  and  speak- 
ers of  a  later  day.  An  exhibition  of  Everett's  memory 
which  naturally  excited  the  wonder  of  his  fellow-mem- 
bers of  the  Massachusetts  Historical  Society  was  made 
in  his  address  to  that  body  on  the  life  and  benefactions 
of  Thomas  Dowse.  These  benefactions  were  a  collec- 
tion of  paintings  in  the  Athenaeum  Gallery,  and  a 
library  presented  to  the  Historical  Society.  Without 
a  note  in  his  hands,  and  without  a  moment's  hesitation 
for  the  recalling  of  a  word,  Everett  recited  a  list  of 
painters  and  writers  in  nearly  every  ancient  and  modern 


304  BOSTON 

language,  one  hundred  and  eighty  names  in  all.  If 
that  was  a  heavy  load  for  a  speech  to  carry,  it  had,  at 
least,  an  extraordinary  interest  as  a  feat  of  memory. 
Another  instance  of  the  same  power  had  its  occasion 
in  the  special  acknowledgment  of  a  privately  printed 
history  of  an  English  county  sent  by  its  author,  an 
English  gentleman,  to  the  Boston  Public  Library. 
Besides  thanking  the  donor  on  behalf  of  the  institution, 
Everett  recalled  the  fact  that  he  was  present  at  Oxford 
when  the  gentleman  received  his  degree  ;  "'that  he  lis- 
tened "  —  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Waterston's  version  of 
the  story  —  "  with  great  pleasure  to  a  Poem  which  that 
gentleman  recited  at  that  time,  and  that  he  was  par- 
ticularly impressed  by  the  following  lines.  Here  he 
quoted  a  passage  from  a  poem  which  had  never  been 
published,  and  which  Mr.  Everett  heard  incidentally 
from  a  young  man  at  that  time  quite  unknown,  and  in 
connection  with  the  various  pubHc  exercises  of  a  Liter- 
ary Festival,  and  yet  years  after  he  could  recall  those 
lines,  and  send  them  across  the  Atlantic  to  their  author, 
who  was  as  much  astonished  as  if  he  had  heard  a  voice 
coming  down  to  him  from  the  heavens."  But  it  is 
not  for  memory  and  scholarship,  put  even  to  the  uses 
Everett  made  of  these  rich  gifts  of  his,  to  win  for  their 
possessor  the  securest  fame.  Through  leaving  no 
single  "  great  work "  behind  him,  he  has  shared  the 
fate  of  many  orators. 

The  permanence  of  Webster's  fame  as  an  orator,  of 
course,  owes  much  to  the  contribution  many  of  his 
speeches  made  to  the  history  of  his  generation.      But 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS 


30. 


for  his  political  eminence,  even  his  towering  personal- 
ity might  not  have  preserved  this  fame.  The  other 
Boston  orator,  Rufus  Choate,  in  whose  spoken  words 
our  grandfathers  took  a  pleasure  both  contemporary 
and  equal  with  that  afforded  by  Everett  and  Webster, 


House  of  Daniel  Webster,  Summer  Street. 

has  perhaps  been  even  less  fortunate  with  posterity 
than  Everett.  Yet  it  used  to  be  said,  "  Webster  is 
like  other  folks,  only  there  is  more  of  him  ;  but  as  to 
Choate,  who  saw  or  ever  knew  his  like  ?  "  The  witty, 
learned  lawyer,  of  incomparable  quickness  and  power 
in  winning  a  jury  to  his  views,  known  in  his  day  as 
the  leader  of  the  American  bar,  in  local  and  national 


3o6  BOSTON 

politics  a  pillar  of  the  Whig  party,  in  private  life  the 
most  delightful  of  companions,  has  come  in  less  than 
half  a  century  from  his  death  to  be  strangely  little  more 
than  a  name. 

Through  all  of  Everett's  oratorical  career  he  had  no 
better  opportunity  to  test  his  power  of  moving  an 
audience  than  in  the  early  occasion  of  Lafayette's  pres- 
ence at  the  Phi  Beta  Kappa  celebration  at  Harvard  in 
1824.  Everett  was  the  orator  of  the  day.  Whatever 
his  words  of  welcome  may  have  owed  in  their  effect  to 
Lafayette  himself,  that  effect  was  little  short  of  tumul- 
tuous. For  some  minutes,  at  one  point  of  the  speech, 
the  excitement  was  such  that  Everett  was  silenced. 
Old  men  leapt  to  their  feet  weeping  for  joyful  memory 
of  what  the  French  hero  of  our  Revolution  had  done 
for  us.  In  the  diary  of  one  who  was  present  are  found 
the  words,  "  Every  man  in  the  assembly  was  in  tears." 
It  is  even  told  that  Lafayette,  lacking  proficiency  in 
the  English  tongue,  missed  the  application  of  the  ora- 
tor's words  to  himself,  and  when  the  tears  were  fol- 
lowed by  deafening  applause  joined  in  it  as  lustily  as 
the  best. 

The  college  commencements  at  Cambridge  in  these 
earlier  years  of  the  century  took  place  in  August.  On 
the  17th  of  the  following  June,  fifty  years  after 
the  Battle  of  Bunker  Hill,  the  cornerstone  of  the 
Bunker  Hill  Monument  was  laid.  For  this  occasion 
Lafayette  returned  to  Boston  where,  the  summer  be- 
fore, he  had  met  with  a  reception  of  which  Everett's 
address  of  welcome  was  but  one  of  the  incidents  of  an 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  307 

enthusiasm  kindling  the  community  in  all  its  classes. 
The  semi-centennial  celebrations  of  great  events  in 
our  national  life  had  a  freshness  and  fervor  which  have 
been  lost  as  the  occasions  commemorated  have  gone 
farther  into  the  past.  The  same  flavor  of  youth  that 
pervaded  the  maritime  exploits  of  our  early  commerce 
entered  the  observance  of  days  for  public  rejoicing. 
With  the  joy  of  the  Bunker  Hill  day  of  1825  was 
blended  a  solemnity  due  in  part  to  the  presence  of 
Lafayette,  and  to  the  dignity  of  Webster's  oration ; 
but  also  in  great  measure  to  the  participation  of  the 
"venerable  men"  who  had  survived  both  the  Bunker 
Hill  fight  and  other  Revolutionary  battles.  A  stage- 
driver  of  the  time  accounted  for  the  extraordinary 
crowd  which  thronged  the  city  by  saying,  "  Every- 
thing that  has  wheels  and  everything  which  has  legs 
used  them  to  get  to  Boston."  The  extent  to  which 
the  community  as  a  whole  took  part  in  the  exercises  is 
revealed  by  the  record  that  the  head  of  the  civil  and 
military  procession  to  the  site  of  the  monument 
reached  Charlestown  Square  before  its  rear  on  the 
Common  had  started.  Indeed  the  spirit  of  contem- 
porary annalists  of  the  occasion  is  rather  that  of  per- 
sons who  are  themselves  making  history  than  of  mere 
commemorators  of  the  past. 

The  building  of  the  monument  proceeded  slowly. 
The  leisurely  growth  of  what  was  then  almost  an 
eighth  wonder,  was  due,  we  may  believe,  not  so  much 
to  the  temperate  speed  of  the  total  abstinence  work- 
men who  alone   were   employed  in   the  undertaking, 


3o8  BOSTON 

as  to  the  slow  accumulation  of  the  needed  funds.  The 
Bunker  Hill  Monument  Association  had  the  matter 
in  hand,  but  the  completion  of  Solomon  Willard's 
design,  based  practically  upon  a  model  submitted  by 
Horatio  Greenough  while  a  collegian,  would  have  been 
still  longer  delayed  but  for  the  ladies  of  Boston.  In 
1840  they  organized  a  fair  which  cleared  ^30,000 
for  the  patriotic  purpose.  On  the  17th  of  June,  1843, 
Webster  delivered  his  second  Bunker  Hill  oration,  on 
the  completion  of  the  monument.  President  Tyler 
and  his  cabinet  came  from  Washington  for  the  occa- 
sion, and  again  the  city  gave  itself  over  to  general 
rejoicing. 

The  pageantries  of  other  days  can  be  but  partially 
imagined,  yet  for  what  they  typify  they  are  at  least 
worth  trying  to  recall.  Within  a  decade  from  the 
completion  of  the  Bunker  Hill  Monument  there  were 
two  celebrations  in  Boston  which  expressed  an  honest 
naivete  of  local  pride  that  would  be  almost  impossible 
in  our  more  sophisticated  time.  So  many  gigantic 
tasks  are  begun  and  ended  by  our  contemporaries  that 
perhaps  we  could  not  take  with  sufficient  seriousness 
such  achievements  as  the  installation  of  a  new  system 
of  water-works  or  the  completion  of  railroads  connect- 
ing Boston  with  Canada  and  the  West.  The  first  of 
these  events  —  the  introduction  of  water  from  Lake 
Cochituate  into  the  streets  and  houses  of  Boston  —  took 
place  October  25,  1848.  The  day  was  opened  by  the 
pealing  of  bells  and  a  salute  of  one  hundred  guns. 
The  chief  glory  of  the  holiday  lay,  of  course,  in  the 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS  309 

procession.  It  Is  difficult  to  imagine  the  occasion  of 
our  own  times  which  could  bring  into  a  single  line 
of  march  the  elements  which  were  blended  on  this 
autumn  day  of  1848.  There  were  the  dignitaries  of 
the  city,  of  the  state,  and  of  other  states  ;  the  presi- 
dent and  officials  of  Harvard  College,  officers  of  the 
army  and  navy,  the  reverend  clergy,  the  medical 
faculty,  editors  of  newspapers  throughout  New  Eng- 
land, representatives  of  many  trades,  secret  orders, 
charitable  and  temperance  organizations,  sailors  and 
marine  societies,  the  city  fire  department,  children 
from  schools  and  asylums,  and,  to  cut  short  a  longer 
list,  the  members  of  the  Handel  and  Haydn  Society. 
This  extraordinary  cavalcade  passed  through  streets 
adorned  with  bibhcal  texts  and  inscriptions  giving 
piecemeal  the  whole  history  of  the  water  enterprise. 
Opposite  the  Boston  Museum  a  Moorish  arch  bore 
such  appropriate  lines  from  Shakespeare  as,  "  There 
will  be  a  world  of  water  shed."  Amongst  the  moving 
trade  displays  were  a  complete  printing-office  in  busy 
operation,  and  a  provision-shop  conducted  by  Faneuil 
Hall  marketmen.  Twenty-five  representatives  of 
the  Seamen's  Bethel  manned  a  full-rigged  sloop 
of  war,  with  Father  Taylor  on  the  quarter-deck.  The 
Salem  East  India  Society  provided  an  elaborate  palan- 
quin borne  by  eight  men  in  oriental  costumes.  The 
list  might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely.  Such  a 
procession  could  move  but  slowly,  and  it  was  four 
o'clock  before  the  dignitaries  mounted  a  platform  in 
the    middle    of   the    Frog-pond,    and    the    multitude 


3IO  BOSTON 

spread  itself  over  the  nearer  and  remoter  slopes  of 
the  Common.  Of  course,  there  were  speeches,  and 
the  Mayor,  Josiah  Quincy,  Jr.,  ended  his  address  by 
asking  the  great  assembly  if  it  were  their  pleasure  that 
the  water  be  turned  on.  A  roaring  "Ay"  was  the 
response.  Then  the  water-gates  were  opened,  and  a 
column  from  sixty  to  eighty  feet  in  height  rose  into 
the  air.  Even  the  city  document,  recording  the  doings 
of  the  day,  preserves  this  enthusiastic  record  of  that 
final  scene :  "  The  sun  was  just  sinking  -below  the 
horizon,  and  its  last  rays  tinged  the  summit  of  the 
watery  column,  the  bells  began  to  ring  —  cannon  were 
fired  —  and  rockets  streamed  across  the  sky.  To  the 
multitude  around,  the  scene  was  one  of  intense  inter- 
est and  excitement,  which  it  is  impossible  to  describe, 
but  which  no  one  can  forget.  After  the  first  moment 
of  surprise  most  of  the  spectators  looked  around  upon 
their  neighbors  —  some  laughed  aloud  —  the  men 
swung  their  hats  and  shouted  —  and  some  even  wept." 
The  Mayor  informed  the  children  that  the  schools 
would  be  closed  and  the  fountain  would  play  all  the 
next  day.  Fireworks  in  the  evening  brought  the  cele- 
bration to  a  ghttering  close. 

Three  years  later  the  Railroad  Celebration  aroused 
the  city  to  similar  rejoicing,  which  covered  a  period 
of  three  days.  There  were  banquets  and  speech-mak- 
ing, a  harbor  excursion,  and  a  yacht  race  for  the  enter- 
tainment of  visitors  and  natives.  President  Fillmore 
and  Lord  Elgin,  Governor-general  of  Canada,  were 
the  most  eminent  of  many  distinguished  guests.     But 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS  313 

the  details  are  insignificant  beside  the  meaning  of  such 
festivals  as  these  —  that  here  was  a  community  grow- 
ing like  a  youth  from  strength  to  strength,  and,  with 
all  that  engaging  freedom  from  self-consciousness  which 
marks  the  youthful  period,  frankly  rejoicing  in  its  own 
achievements. 

While  these  spectacular  public  works,  announced 
by  the  flourish  of  trumpets,  were  going  forward,  there 
were,  through  the  same  years  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  Boston,  many  quieter  yet  perhaps  even  more  impor- 
tant undertakings  on  foot.  Concerning  one  of  them, 
the  work  of  the  Lowell  Institute,  Dr.  Holmes  made 
the  following  statement :  "  When  you  have  said  every 
enthusiastic  thing  that  you  may,  you  will  not  have 
half  filled  the  measure  of  its  importance  to  Boston 
—  New  England  —  the  country  at  large."  After  all 
allowances  are  made  for  the  zeal  of  a  Bostonian,  this 
declaration  is  enough  to  provoke  either  reflection  or 
inquiry.  The  inquirer  will  learn  that  since  1840  the 
Lowell  foundation  has  provided  the  people  of  Boston 
with  free  lectures,  now  numbering  between  five  and 
six  hundred  each  year,  by  the  foremost  scholars  and 
thinkers  of  the  English-speaking  world.  Reflection, 
aided  by  a  long  memory,  will  recall  the  early  popular- 
ity of  lectures  in  Boston.  It  is  recorded  that  here, 
during  the  season  before  the  Lowell  Lectures  were 
instituted,  no  less  than  twenty-six  courses,  not  includ- 
ing those  of  less  than  eight  lectures,  were  delivered,  at 
an  expense  of  more  than  $12,000,  to  audiences  aggre- 
gating  about    13,500   persons.     The  opportunity  for 


314  BOSTON 

the  permanent  filling  of  the  want  implied  by  these 
figures  was  therefiDre  made  in  advance.  The  man 
whose  generous  provision  fiDr  posterity  filled  it  was 
John  Lowell,  Jr.,  son  of  Francis  Cabot  Lowell,  the 
pioneer  of  the  great  cotton  industry  of  Massachusetts. 
John  Lowell,  Jr.,  a  first  cousin  of  James  Russell 
Lowell,  belonged  to  a  family  which  for  many  genera- 
tions has  given  of  its  best  to  the  life  of  the  community. 
In  1 83 1,  before  he  was  thirty,  he  found  himself,  through 
the  death  of  his  wife  and  two  children,  irr  the  lonely 
possession  of  a  large  fortune.  The  accumulation  of 
greater  wealth  in  the  mercantile  career  he  had  begun 
did  not  appeal  to  him,  and  he  prepared  himself  for  ex- 
tensive travel.  A  tour  of  the  West  came  first.  Then 
he  went  to  Europe,  where  he  made  elaborate  plans  for 
visiting  the  countries  of  Asia.  Proceeding  to  Egypt 
on  his  way  thither,  he  was  taken  ill.  His  will  had  been 
drawn  before  he  left  America.  At  the  village  of 
Luxor,  amongst  the  ruins  of  Thebes,  he  wrote  a  codi- 
cil, putting  into  final  form  his  wishes  with  regard  to 
the  great  bequest.  When  the  first  course  of  Lowell 
Institute  Lectures  was  opened,  Edward  Everett  in  his 
address  of  dedication  spoke  of  "  the  testamentary  pro- 
visions drawn  up  in  the  land  of  Egypt,  on  the  ruins 
of  one  of  the  oldest  seats  of  art  and  civilization  of 
which  ruins  remain,  —  provisions  in  which  a  great  and 
liberal  spirit,  bowed  down  with  sickness,  in  a  foreign  and 
a  barbarous  land,  expressed  some  of  its  last  aspirations 
for  the  welfare  of  his  native  city."  Convalescent  from 
the  attack  of  illness  in  Egypt,  Lowell  made  his  way. 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  315 


John  Lowell,  Jr. 
Painting  by  Gleyre,  in  possession  of  A.  Lawrence  Lowell,  Esq. 

through  shipwreck  and  many  hardships,  toward  Bom- 
bay, where  he  died  May  4,  1836,  thirty-four  years  old. 
The  will  put  aside  nearly  ^250,000  for  the  establish- 
ment of  the  lectures  which  have  preserved  this  young 
man's  name.  It  was  provided  that  no  part  of  princi- 
pal or  income  could  be  invested  in  buildings,  and  each 
year  one-tenth  of  the  income  must  be  added  to  the 
principal.  Though  the  trustees  of  the  Boston 
Athenaeum    were    appointed     "visitors,"    the    entire 


3i6  BOSTON 

management  of  the  Institute  was  vested  in  one  trustee, 
who,  within  a  week  of  his  assuming  office,  must  name 
his  successor.  The  testator,  besides  naming  his  cousin 
John  Amory  Lowell  as  the  first  trustee,  made  this 
provision :  "  In  selecting  a  successor  the  trustee  shall 
always  choose  in  preference  to  all  others  some  male 
descendant  of  my  grandfather,  John  Lowell,  provided 
there  be  one  who  is  competent  to  hold  the  office  of 
trustee,  and  of  the  name  of  Lowell."  Equally  notice- 
able was  the  emphasis  laid  by  John  Lowell,  Jr.,  upon 
the  necessity  of  lectures  dealing  with  Christianity  and 
"the  moral  doctrines  of  the  gospel."  It  was  written, 
"  No  man  ought  to  be  appointed  a  lecturer,  who  is  not 
willing  to  declare  and  who  does  not  previously  declare 
his  belief  in  the  divine  revelation  of  the  Old  and  New 
Testaments,  leaving  the  interpretation  thereof  to  his 
own  conscience."  The  importance  of  scientific  and 
literary  subjects  seems  indeed  to  have  been  secondary 
in  the  testator's  mind.  In  the  progress  of  years  it  is 
evident  that  a  liberal  interpretation  must  have  been 
placed  upon  these  wishes  of  the  founder,  yet  the  trus- 
tees have  constantly  taken  a  broad  view  of  the  truly 
vital  interests  in  the  world  of  thought,  and  have  been 
wise  in  excluding  crude  theories  of  which  the  value  is 
still  to  be  proved.  The  generous  income  from  the 
fund  has  made  the  best  remuneration  possible.  In 
early  days  a  single  course  would  sometimes  yield  the 
lecturer  a  larger  reward  than  the  annual  salary  of  the 
most  em.inent  professor  in  any  American  college.  The 
list  of  lecturers,  beginning  with  Benjamin  Silliman  of 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS  317 

Yale,  proceeds  through  all  the  years  with  a  shining 
catalogue  of  names.  No  less  remarkable  is  the  list  of 
books  which  were  first  given  to  the  public  in  the  form 
of  Lowell  Lectures. 

The  response  of  the  Boston  public  to  the  privileges 
of  the  Institute  has  always  been  eager.  In  the  second 
season  so  great  a  crowd  applied  for  tickets  to  a  course 
by  Silliman  that  the  windows  of  the  Old  Corner  Book- 
store, where  the  distribution  took  place,  were  broken 
in.  Sometimes  there  were  eight  or  ten  thousand  appli- 
cants for  a  single  course,  and  it  became  necessary  to 
dispense  the  tickets  by  lot.  When  the  rule  to  close 
the  doors  of  the  lecture  room  at  the  very  beginning  of 
a  lecture  was  first  adopted,  it  met  with  violent  opposi- 
tion. So  keen  a  desire  for  knowledge  was  displayed 
by  one  respectable  gentleman  that  he  attempted  to 
kick  his  way  through  the  closed  door,  —  an  attempt 
which  led  him  to  the  lock-up,  not  the  lecture  room. 
More  peaceful  methods  have  come  to  prevail,  and  all 
the  while  the  Lowell  Institute  has  been  making  those 
contributions  to  the  intelligence  of  the  community 
which  compelled  Professor  Drummond,  after  he  came 
to  Boston  and  could  measure  at  closer  range  the  capac- 
ity of  the  audience  he  must  face,  to  rewrite  entirely 
the  course  of  lectures  he  had  prepared. 

To  the  same  general  end  of  diffused  intelligence  for 
which  Lowell  wrought  by  his  liberality,  Horace  Mann 
rendered  an  important  service  by  his  labors.  We  have 
grown  accustomed  to  the  name  of  educator  and  his 
work.     To  Horace   Mann  as  an  orgranizer  of  educa- 


3i8 


BOSTON 


tional  forces  a  memorable  debt  is  due.  The  town  of 
Franklin,  not  far  from  Boston,  was  his  birthplace. 
There  is  a  story  that  when  the  town  was  young,  Ben- 
jamin Franklin,  after  whom   it  was   named,  received 

word  from  the  citizens  that 
they  would  build  a  meeting- 
house if  he  would  present  it 
with  a  bell.  His  character- 
istic response  was  that  they 
had  better  save  their  money 
and  build  no  steeple.  Instead 
of  the  bell  he  offered  them 
books  — "  since  sense  was 
preferable  to  sound."  Ac- 
cordingly, books  to  the  value 
of  ^25  were  sent  from  Lon- 
don, and  from  these  Horace 
Mann  learned  some  of  his  first 
lessons  in  Benjamin  Frank- 
lin's wholesome  doctrine.  Not  at  Harvard,  like  so  many 
of  his  fellows,  but  at  Brown,  he  received  his  collegiate 
education.  To  Massachusetts  he  returned  for  the  prac- 
tice of  law,  first  in  Dedham,  then  in  Boston.  In  both 
branches  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Court  he  did 
the  work  of  a  legislator.  The  State  Board  of  Education 
was  created  in  1837.  For  twelve  years  Mann  was  its 
secretary,  and  a  most  active  member.  To  friends  sur- 
prised that  he  should  abandon  the  law  for  what  seemed 
so  indefinite  a  post  he  made  answer :  "  The  interests 
of  a  client  are  small  compared  with  the  interests  of  the 


Horace  Mann. 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  319 

next  generation.  Let  the  next  generation,  then,  be  my 
client."  This  client  he  served  faithfully  and  well.  It 
is  said  that  when  he  came  into  office  two-thirds  of  the 
teachers  in  Massachusetts  got  their  places  without 
examination.  The  schools  were  in  need  of  many  re- 
forms, modernizing,  enriching,  and  lifting  to  the  high 
democratic  point  of  excellence  which  should  make  them 
good  enough  for  rich  and  poor  aUke.  These  were  re- 
forms which  could  not  be  made  without  opposition.  It 
came  from  the  Orthodox  who  dreaded  the  Unitarian 
influence  of  Mann,  and  feared  that  "  godless  schools  " 
would  result  from  the  reading  of  the  Bible  without 
comment.  It  came  from  Boston  school-teachers  who 
could  not  follow  the  leadership  of  one  who  himself  had 
not  taught.  With  these  warring  elements  Mann  found 
himself  in  more  than  one  acute  controversy.  The 
weapons  of  the  fighter  with  words  were  completely  in 
Mann's  control,  and  so  violently  did  he  use  them  at 
times  that  even  his  friends  had  cause  to  tremble.  But 
the  agitation  of  which  he  was  the  centre  produced  an 
awakening  of  interest  in  the  public  schools  of  Boston 
which  resulted  entirely  in  good,  and  has  not  yet  subsided. 
Throughout  the  state  his  work  for  primary  and  sec- 
ondary education,  for  normal  schools  and  the  district 
libraries  which  paved  the  way  for  the  free  public  libra- 
ries of  Massachusetts,  yielded  fruit  for  his  clients  in 
more  than  one  generation  to  come.  All  that  he  did 
in  the  cause  of  antislavery  in  and  out  of  Congress, 
where  he  became  the  successor  of  John  Quincy  Adams, 
bore  but  an  indirect  relation  to  his  work  as  an  educator. 


320  BOSTON 

To  this  work  he  returned,  devoting  the  closing  years 
of  his  life  to  the  presidency  of  Antioch  College  in 
Ohio.  Now  that  his  years  of  conflict  are  far  in  the 
past  he  takes  the  place  his  biographer,  Mr.  B.  A. 
Hinsdale,  has  assigned  him  as  the  opportune  man  who 
put  the  cause  of  popular  education  in  America  truly  on 
its  feet,  and  made  Massachusetts  "  the  leader  in  educa- 
tional reform,  holding  a  position  among  the  states  com- 
parable to  Mr.  Mann's  position  among  educational 
men."  On  the  issues  of  politics  he  differed  so  widely 
from  Daniel  Webster  that  there  is  an  ironic  humor  in 
the  companionship  of  the  statues  of  the  two  men  be- 
fore the  State  House  on  Beacon  Hill;  but  the  right 
of  the  pioneer  in  education  to  this  place  of  honor  is  no 
more  questioned  than  that  of  the  defender  of  the  Con- 
stitution. 

Though  the  intimate  friend  of  Horace  Mann  in  the 
flesh.  Dr.  Samuel  Gridley  Howe,  lacks  a  monument 
of  bronze  in  the  streets  of  Boston,  he  has  his  more 
living  memorial  in  the  work  of  "The  Perkins  Institu- 
tion and  Massachusetts  School  for  the  Blind."  Like 
Mann,  he  was  prepared  at  Brown  University  for  the 
work  he  chose  to  do.  It  would  be  easy  to  fill  many 
pages  with  the  story  of  his  varied  activities.  One  of 
the  earliest  and  most  romantic  of  them  was  his  per- 
sonal enlistment,  like  Byron's,  in  the  cause  of  Greek 
liberty.  It  was  prophetic  of  his  lifelong  devotion  to 
one  or  another  movement  for  the  emancipation  of  his 
less  fortunate  fellow-men.  Through  all  the  anti- 
slavery  agitation   there  was   no  more  consistent  friend 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS 


321 


of  the  enslaved  than  Dr.  Howe.  Yet  if  we  may  accept 
the  comparison  Dr.  Hedge  once  drew  between  him 
and  too  many  of  the  race  of  reformers,  he  deserves  to 
be  remembered  for  a  quahty  of  tolerance  that  is  rare 
indeed.  "  Advocates 
of  temperance  I  have 
known,"  said  Dr. 
Hedge,  "  who  reeled 
and  staggered  and 
wanted  to  intoxicate 
you  with  their  heady 
politics ;  champions 
of  abolition  I  have 
known  who  wanted 
to  fasten  the  yoke  of 
their  method  on  your 
neck  ;  and  even  apos- 
tles of  non-resistance 
who  handled  their 
olive-branch  as  if  it 
were  a  war  club. 
Dr.  Howe  was  not  of  that  line.  He  was  that  excep- 
tional character,  —  a  tolerant  enthusiast,  a  fair  advocate 
of  a  righteous  cause." 

The  cause  with  which  his  name  is  chiefly  associated 
is  the  rescue  of  the  deaf-blind  from  their  imprisonment 
behind  the  barriers  of  silence  and  darkness.  As  a  young 
man  he  made  his  second  journey  to  Europe  for  the 
purpose  of  studying  the  methods  of  educating  the  blind 
in  Paris  and  elsewhere.     In  1832  his  first  school,  with 

Y 


Thomas  Handasyd  Perkins. 
Painting  by  Gambardella. 


322  BOSTON 

half  a  dozen  pupils,  was  opened  in  modest  quarters. 
The  raised  type  for  teaching  the  bhnd  to  read  was 
laboriously  made  by  pasting  twine  on  cardboard.  Exhi- 
bitions of  the  skill  rapidly  acquired  by  the  pupils  soon 
began  to  attract  attention.  Among  those  most  inter- 
ested was  Colonel  Thomas  Handasyd  Perkins,  merchant 
and  ship-owner,  in  whom  the  power  of  wealth  and  the 
spirit  of  liberality  were  blended  in  fortunate  proportion. 
One  who  saw  him  first  as  an  old  man  remarked  that 
then  his  face  itself  seemed  an  institution  of  benevolence. 
The  great  service  he  rendered  the  Institution  for  the 
Blind  was  in  offering  it  a  mansion  and  grounds  in  Pearl 
Street,  valued  at  ^25,000,  on  the  condition  that  others 
should  raise  $50,000  for  the  same  good  object.  Within 
a  month  the  sum  was  raised,  partly  through  private 
subscriptions,  partly  through  a  fair  in  Faneuil  Hall 
conducted  by  ladies,  and  drawing  contributions  of  many 
an  article  for  sale  from  the  great  source  known  as 
"everybody."  In  1839  the  land  speculations  which 
were  to  have  made  South  Boston  the  "  court  end  "  of 
town  brought  into  the  market  at  a  low  figure  the  hotel 
building  which,  with  enlargements,  the  institution  has 
occupied  from  that  time  to  the  present.  In  this  year 
of  1839  ^^*  Howe's  annual  report  made  the  statement : 
"  This  is  certain,  that  when  audiences  in  England  and 
Scotland  were  uttering  by  shouts  their  astonishment  and 
pleasure  that  blind  children  could  read  books  in  raised 
letters,  it  had  ceased  altogether  to  be  a  matter  of  sur- 
prise in  this  country,  so  common  had  it  become."  In 
the  institution  at  South   Boston    Dr.  Howe  wrought 


MEN  AND    MONUMENTS  323 

what  seemed,  and  was,  the  miracle  of  leading  to  intelli- 
gent womanhood  the  deaf,  dumb,  and  blind  child, 
Laura  Bridgman,  whom  he  found  in  a  New  Hamp- 
shire farmhouse,  doomed,  but  for  his  loving  patience, 
sympathy,  and  insight,  to  the  steadily  contracting  life 
of  the  unaided  defective.  If  his  work  had  begun  and 
ended  with  Laura  Bridgman,  it  would  have  been 
extraordinary ;  but  it  has  served  as  the  ground  of 
hope  and  the  starting-point  of  effort  on  behalf  of  so 
many  whose  misfortunes  have  been  turned  almost  into 
advantages,  that  Dr.  Howe  must  be  admitted  to  the 
company  of  the  true  pioneers  in   human  progress. 

While  his  great  work  was  going  forward  in  South 
Boston,  there  was  demonstrated  in  the  opposite,  or 
West  End  of  the  town,  a  discovery  which  has  put  the 
world  itself  in  the  debt  of  a  Boston  dentist.  The 
Massachusetts  General  Hospital,  incorporated  in  181 1, 
and  established  ten  years  later,  in  one  of  the  best  build- 
ings of  Bulfinch's  design,  was  the  scene  of  the  first 
surgical  operations  upon  patients  made  insensible  to 
pain  by  the  beneficent  use  of  ether.  When  a  dis- 
covery has  brought  to  the  human  race  such  blessings 
as  those  of  modern  surgery  —  of  which  the  very  pos- 
sibility depends  upon  anaesthetics  —  it  is  lamentable 
that  the  record  of  the  great  forward  step  must  be  in 
large  measure  a  record  of  controversy. 

The  monument  to  William  Thomas  Green  Morton 
in  the  Boston  Public  Garden  may  be  taken  to  represent 
the  award  of  posterity  in  the  dispute  between  the  two 
chief  claimants   to   the   glory  of  the  discovery.     The 


3^4 


BOSTON 


second  of  these  men  was  a  Boston  physician,  Charles 
T.  Jackson.  He  was  the  same  Dr.  Jackson  who  con- 
tended with  Samuel  F.  B.  Morse  for  the  honors  of 
invention  in  telegraphy  —  with  such  success  as  the 
comparative  familiarity  of  his  name  and  that  of  Morse 
implies.  The  chief  points  of  the  ether  story,  as  told 
in  pamphlets  and  testimony  carried  even  to  a  com- 
mittee appointed  by  Congress  to  decide  between  the 
claimants,  are  these  :  Dr.  Morton  had  practised  den- 
tistry under  Dr.  Horace  Wells  of  Hartford,  an 
experimenter  with  anaesthetics,  for  whom  also  the 
disputed  honors  have  been  claimed.  After  coming 
to  Boston  Dr.  Morton  studied  under  Dr.  Jackson. 
Later,  when  seriously  considering  the  possibilities  of 
anaesthesia  in  dentistry,  he  went  to  Jackson  for  advice, 
and  the  use  of  rectified  sulphuric  ether  was  recom- 
mended. This  was  not  a  discovery  of  Jackson's. 
Several  years  before,  acting  on  a  suggestion  of  Sir 
Humphry  Davy,  he  had  himself  inhaled  sulphuric 
ether,  with  the  result  of  unconsciousness.  He  had 
not  tried  it  for  the  prevention  of  pain.  Morton 
immediately  proceeded  with  the  experiment,  first  upon 
himself,  then,  September  30,  1846,  on  a  patient  will- 
ing to  attempt  unconsciousness  during  the  extraction 
of  a  tooth.  On  the  next  day  Morton  hastened  to 
Jackson  with  the  news  of  his  success.  This  time 
Jackson  advised  the  dentist  to  lay  the  matter  before 
the  surgeons  of  the  Massachusetts  General  Hospital. 
He  did  so,  and  on  October  16,  1846,  was  permitted 
to  administer  ether  to  a  patient  upon  whom  Dr.  John 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS 


3^S 


C.  Warren  performed  an  operation  with  such  success 
that  the  painless  removal  of  a  tumor  and  the  amputa- 
tion of  a  leg,  within  three  weeks  of  Dr.  Warren's  ini- 
tial venture,  established  beyond  doubt  the  inestimable 
value  of  the  new  achievement. 

Then  it  was  that  Dr.  Jackson  and  his  friends  came 
into  prominence.  Though  Morton  offered  the  free 
use  of  his  discovery  to  hospitals,  the  army  and  the 
navy,  he  expected  to  ask  of  general  practitioners  a 
moderate  annual  payment.  To  whom  did  the  dis- 
coverer's rewards  of  fame  and  fortune  really  belong  ? 
The  friends  of  Jackson  recognized  in  him  a  Columbus, 
and  in  Morton  merely  the  sailor  who  first  shouted 
"  land  "  from  the  masthead.  Morton  was  willing  to 
yield  and  Jackson  to  accept  one-tenth  part  of  the 
profits.  In  the  end  it  mattered  little,  commercially, 
what  arrangements  were  made,  for  the  use  of  ether 
became  so  general  and  essential  that  Morton  waived 
his  rights,  and  called  himself  "  the  only  person  in  the 
world  to  whom  this  discovery  has  so  far  been  a  pecun- 
iary loss."  In  1848.  the  trustees  of  the  Massachu- 
setts General  Hospital  and  other  citizens  of  Boston 
presented  him,  as  the  true  discoverer,  with  a  box  con- 
taining $1000.  When  the  French  Academy  made 
its  award  of  2500  francs  to  Jackson  and  to  Mor- 
ton alike,  it  distinguished  between  the  recognition 
of  a  scientific  fact  by  the  one  and  its  application 
by  the  other.  Thus,  as  the  trustees  of  the  hospital 
foretold,  there  must  remain  an  indissoluble,  though 
reluctant,  copartnership  between  the  two  men.     How 


326  BOSTON 

petty  the  controversy  would  appear  to  succeeding 
generations  the  parties  to  it  could  hardly  have  im- 
agined. But  to  them  the  burden  of  suffering  lifted 
from  men  and  women  in  every  quarter  of  the  globe 
could  not  appear  as  the  historic  and  the  daily  fact  we 
know  it  to  be.  For  the  foundation  of  this  fact  we 
turn  with  gratitude  to  what  was  done  in  Boston  on  the 
last  day  of  September,  1846. 

This  fourth  decade  of  the  nineteenth  century  was 
uncommonly  fruitful  of  good  things  in  Boston.  Some 
of  them  have  been  touched  upon.  Incomplete  indeed 
would  be  the  list  if  the  Boston  Public  Library  were 
omitted  from  it.  Though  it  was  not  till  the  fifties 
that  the  institution  from  which  the  present  library  has 
grown  took  definite  form,  its  real  beginnings  were  in 
the  forties.  As  early  as  the  seventeenth  century  there 
are  allusions  to  a  public  library  in  the  town  house. 
There  were  large  private  collections,  especially  in  the 
eighteenth  century,  made  by  such  clergymen  as  the 
Mathers  and  Thomas  Prince,  and  to  these  books 
the  public  had  some  access.  As  time  went  on  various 
learned  bodies  built  up  libraries  of  their  own.  In 
1794  the  "Boston  Library,"  a  private  proprietary 
institution,  came  into  being.  Still  later,  as  a  previous 
chapter  has  shown,  the  Athenaeum  made  a  larger 
entrance  to  the  same  field.  Thus,  and  through  many 
subsidiary  channels,  the  reading  habit,  characteristic  of 
the  place  from  its  earhest  years,  was  nourished.  The 
idea  of  free  books  for  the  whole  public  was  yet  to 
be  born.     When  the  military  awaited  the  arrival  of 


k!      en 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  329 

Lafayette  at  the  city  line,  free  punch  was  provided, 
together  with  more  soHd  refreshments.  "  Had  any 
one  proposed  to  provide  free  books  at  the  expense  of 
the  tax-payers,"  wrote  the  second  Mayor  Quincy 
regarding  this  circumstance,  "  there  would  have  been 
much  indignation.  We  should  have  been  aghast  at 
the  impudence  of  such  a  proposal ;  but  a  few  glasses  of 
punch  was  another  matter."  It  is  a  fact  of  curious 
interest  that  the  first  stimulus  to  a  public  awakening  on 
the  subject  of  free  books  came  from  a  Parisian,  and  the 
first  substantial  contribution  to  the  project  from  a 
London  banker.  By  reason  of  this  fact  Vattemare  and 
Bates  have  their  rightful  place  amongst  those  distin- 
guished local  names  which,  written  in  letters  of  brass, 
help  to  pave  the  entrance  hall  of  the  present  Library 
building. 

Alexandre  Vattemare  was  an  unusual  person.  He 
has  been  variously  defined  as  a  charlatan,  a  conjurer, 
and  a  personator.  The  last  appears  to  be  the  truest 
definition,  for  his  employment,  under  the  name  of  Alex- 
andre, was  that  of  entertaining  audiences  by  the  assump- 
tion of  different  characters,  sometimes  more  than  forty 
in  a  single  evening.  His  powers  of  imitation  made 
him  a  welcome  and  familiar  figure  throughout  Europe. 
During  his  travels,  it  has  been  written,  he  was  "  feted 
by  three  emperors,  and  by  quite  a  rabble  of  kings." 
Sir  Walter  Scott  was  among  his  warm  admirers.  A 
strange  trait  for  one  of  his  occupation  was  a  keen  inter- 
est in  books.  Wherever  he  went,  he  visited  the  local 
libraries,  and  generally  found  them   of  scant   public 


330  BOSTON 

usefulness.  To  remedy  this  condition  he  devised  an 
elaborate  plan  for  international  exchanges  of  books, 
and  used  all  his  powers  to  further  it.  "  When  Vatte- 
mare  failed,"  he  said,  "  to  interest  the  attention  or 
gain  admission  to  important  personages,  Alexandre 
took  his  place  and  carried  the  day."  Having  done 
much  for  his  system  in  Europe  he  came,  first  in  1839, 
at  the  instance  of  Lafayette,  to  America.  Both  houses 
of  Congress  and  several  state  legislatures  indorsed  his 
project.  In  1841,  and  again  in  1847-8,  he  was  in 
Boston  urging  his  plan,  involving  the  establishment 
of  a  free  public  library,  upon  all  in  authority  who 
would  give  him  audience.  Exchanges  of  books  were 
actually  made  between  the  municipal  authorities  of 
Boston  and  of  Paris,  and  a  room  was  set  aside  in  the 
City  Hall  for  the  French  collection  and  the  other  con- 
,  tributions  to  a  pubhc  library  which  it  provoked.  Be- 
tween 1843  ^^^  1852  successive  committees  of  the 
city  government  dealt  with  the  library  question,  which 
assumed  a  steadily  growing  importance  in  the  public 
mind.  In  1854  the  city  opened  a  public  reading-room 
and  library  in  the  Adams  Schoolhouse  on  Mason 
Street.  The  plan  of  international  exchanges  came  to 
little  or  nothing ;  but  the  greater  cause  for  which  the 
zealous  Frenchman  labored  was  fairly  launched. 

Shortly  before  this  small  beginning,  the  London 
banker,  Joshua  Bates,  head  of  the  Barings  firm,  entered 
the  history  of  the  library.  Bates  was  a  Massachusetts 
boy,  born  in  Weymouth,  and  in  his  young  manhood 
had   been   associated  with   a   Boston   shipping  house. 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  331 

After  a  disastrous  attempt  at  business  on  his  own 
account  in  Boston,  he  went  to  Europe  in  a  mercantile 
position  of  trust,  and  came  by  such  steps  to  his  connec- 
tion with  the  great  banking  house.  In  1852  the  city 
of  Boston  was  negotiating  a  water  loan  with  the  Bar- 
ings. With  other  city  documents  the  latest  report  of 
the  library  committee  was  sent  to  London.  There  it 
happened  to  fall  under  the  eye  of  Joshua  Bates,  who 
recognized  amongst  the  signers  the  names  of  gentlemen 
he  knew  and  trusted.  On  October  i,  1852,  he  wrote 
to  the  mayor,  saying  in  effect  that  in  so  liberal  and 
wealthy  a  community  as  Boston  the  recommendations 
of  the  library  report  were  of  course  sure  to  be  carried 
out ;  but  in  order  to  hasten  the  desired  day,  he  made 
an  immediate  gift  of  ^50,000  for  the  purchase  of  books. 
To  the  gift  was  attached  the  condition  that  the  library 
building  should  be  an  ornament  to  the  city  and  should 
contain  a  room  large  enough  to  accommodate  from  100 
to  150  persons  at  reading  tables.  The  letter  which  he 
wrote  at  the  same  time  to  a  Boston  friend  reveals  some- 
thing of  the  impulse  behind  the  gift.  "  My  own  expe- 
rience as  a  poor  boy,'*  he  said,  "  convinced  me  of  the 
great  advantage  of  such  a  library.  Having  no  money 
to  spend  and  no  place  to  go  to,  not  being  able  to  pay 
for  a  fire  or  light  in  my  own  room,  I  could  not  pay  for 
books,  and  the  best  way  I  could  pass  my  evenings  was 
to  sit  in  Hastings,  Etheridge,  &  Bliss's  bookstore,  and 
read  what  they  kindly  permitted  me  to."  Bates  Hall, 
crowded  day  and  night  with  eager  readers  both  in  the 
old  building  and  in  the  new,  has  therefore  had  a  greater 


332  BOSTON 

significance  than  the  mere  words  which  define  it  can 
suggest. 

A  second  gift  from  Joshua  Bates  added  another 
^50,000  to  the  funds  of  the  Library.  The  impression 
that  Paris  and  London  provided  the  entire  impetus  for 
the  new  undertaking  would,  however,  be  quite  false. 
There  were,  besides  municipal  appropriations,  liberal 
gifts  of  money  from  Boston  citizens,  and  liberal  expendi- 
tures of  time  and  thought.  Ticknor  and  Everett  were 
especially  active  in  the  enterprise.  The  purchase  of 
books  from  the  income  of  Bates's  first  gift  required  a 
journey  to  Europe.  When  it  was  decided  that  Tick- 
nor rather  than  Everett  should  go,  he  consulted  such 
men  as  Agassiz,  Felton,  Holmes,  Benjamin  Peirce,  and 
Wilham  Barton  Rogers  regarding  the  compilation  of  a 
list  of  books  most  needed  in  all  departments  of  knowl- 
edge. Between  Ticknor  and  Everett  there  was  also  a 
friendly  disagreement  about  the  free  circulation  of 
popular  books.  In  the  end  the  views  of  Ticknor  in 
favor  of  this  course  prevailed.  The  decision  was  in 
keeping  with  the  identification  of  the  Library  from  its 
earhest  years  with  the  public  school  system  of  the  city. 
The  growth  of  the  institution  from  the  modest  rooms 
in  Mason  Street  into  and  out  of  the  Boylston  Street 
building,  deemed  at  its  opening  sufficient  for  a  century 
to  come,  has  been  unbroken.  The  present  structure 
in  Copley  Square,  where  more  than  eight  hundred 
thousand  volumes  are  housed,  and  whence  the  work 
of  ten  branch  libraries  and  twenty-one  stations  for  the 
delivery  of  books  is  directed,  has  become  an  object  of 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  335 

pilgrimage,  scholarly,  educational,  and  artistic,  for  a 
population  extending  far  beyond  the  limits  of  Boston 
itself. 

Another  Boston  institution,  a  near  neighbor  of  the 
Public  Library,  owing  much  in  its  inception  and  prog- 
ress to  men  who  have  been  Bostonians  only  by  adop- 
tion, is  the  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology. 
To  the  forties  also  must  be  ascribed  its  very  begin- 
nings. In  this  period  of  the  century  it  became  evident 
that  the  industrial  development  of  New  England  de- 
manded a  species  of  practical  education  which  the  older 
colleges  were  not  supplying.  Between  William  Barton 
Rogers,  a  professor  in  the  University  of  Virginia,  and 
his  brother  Henry,  temporarily  in  Boston,  letters 
were  exchanged  in  1846,  carefully  considering  the 
possibilities  of  establishing  a  great  polytechnical  school, 
and  the  preeminence  of  Boston  as  the  place  for  it. 
The  marriage  of  Professor  W,  B.  Rogers,  in  1849,  ^^ 
the  daughter  of  a  Boston  family,  naturally  led  to  his 
removal  a  few  years  later  from  Virginia  to  Boston. 
Through  all  the  fifties  the  project  of  a  technical  school 
was  in  the  air.  In  1859  a  meeting  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  it  to  earth  was  held  in  the  rooms  of  the  Bos- 
ton Society  of  Natural  History.  It  was  proposed  to 
reserve  for  the  new  institution  a  considerable  tract  of 
the  Back  Bay,  then  undergoing  conversion  from  water 
into  land ;  and  one  of  the  gentlemen  present  urged  the 
project  on  the  grounds  that  residents  of  Beacon  Hill, 
used  to  the  cooling  summer  breezes  from  the  Back 
Bay,  would  appreciate  the  effect  of  open  spaces  in  the 


33^ 


BOSTON 


Tablet  in  the  Rogers  Building,  Massachusetts  Institute 
OF  Technology. 


new  land.  Another  thought  the  purchase  of  the  Han- 
cock House,  then  on  the  market,  would  provide  suf- 
ficient accommodations.  A  far  larger  plan  prevailed, 
and  the  resulting  petition  to  the  legislature  was  for 
four  squares  of  land,  to  be  devoted  to  an  elaborate 
"  Conservatory  of  Art,  Science,  and  Historical  Relics," 
with  the  ends  of  popular  education  held  clearly  in 
view.  This  memorial,  and  a  second  of  similar  nature, 
bore  no  direct  results.     A  third  memorial,  represent- 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS 


337 


ing  in  large  measure  the  thought  and  labors  of  Pro- 
fessor Rogers,  produced  a  bill  which  passed  both 
branches  of  the  legislature,  and  received,  April  lo, 
1 86 1,  the  signature  of  Governor  Andrew.  With  this 
act  the  labors  of  Rogers,  in  whom  the  governor  had 
unbounded  confidence,  were  redoubled,  for  it  was  pro- 
vided that  within  a  year  the  friends  of  the  new  institu- 
tion must  raise  one  hundred  thousand  dollars.  With 
the  cloud  of  war  filling  the  whole  southern  horizon,  it 
was  a  hopeless  time  to  beg  for  a  cause  so  purely  of 
peace.  At  the  end  of  the  year,  an  extension  of  another 
year  was  asked  and  granted.  .When  the  second  year 
was  nearly  ended,  only  ^40,000  had  been  pledged,  and 
further  delay  seemed  inevitable.  On  the  very  last  of 
the  days  of  grace  came  the  dramatic  announcement 
from  President  Rogers,  as  he  had  been  called  for  a 
year,  that  Dr.  William  J.  Walker,  formerly  of  Boston, 
then  of  Newport,  had  made  over  to  the  Institute  a 
piece  of  property  worth  at  least  the  indispensable  sum 
of  ^60,000.  The  service  of  public  lectures  on  scien- 
tific subjects  had  already  been  undertaken.  In  the 
winter  of  1865  the  School  of  Industrial  Science,  which 
to-day  performs  the  chief  work  of  what  has  long  been 
called  "  The  Tech,"  received  its  first  pupils  in  a  private 
house  on  Rowe  Place,  and  in  rooms  of  the  Mercantile 
Library  Association  in  Summer  Street,  buildings  which 
were  both  destroyed  in  the  fire  of  1872. 

If  it  has  been  an  uphill  work  to  carry  over  the 
financial  crisis  of  1873,  and  through  nearly  forty  other 
years  an  institution  so  near  the  oldest  seat  of  learning 


338  BOSTON 

in  America,  making,  as  it  naturally  does,  the  first  and 
strongest  appeals  to  the  affection  and  generosity  of  the 
community,  the  Institute  has  been  signally  fortunate 
in  those  who  have  had  the  work  to  do.  Interrupted 
only  by  ill  health.  President  Rogers,  a  true  teacher 
and  enthusiast  in  the  application  of  scientific  fact  to 
daily  life,  wisely  guided  the  great  undertaking  from 
the  years  in  which  it  was  a  mere  dream  to  that  com- 
mencement of  1882  when  he  died  in  the  very  act  of 
handing  his  leadership  over  to  General  Francis  A. 
Walker.  Like  Rogers,  his  successor  had  the  advan- 
tage of  a  training  —  in  the  army,  in  the  national  offices 
of  Statistics,  Indian  Affairs,  and  the  Census  —  which 
knew  no  local  bounds.  In  Boston  he  took  his  place 
as  a  citizen  of  broad  interests,  ready  to  respond  to  the 
many  calls  for  useful  participation  in  local  affairs  which 
came  to  him.  Through  the  continuous  leadership  of 
such  men  the  Institute,  with  all  its  "  specializing,"  has 
exerted  a  strong  influence  of  liberaUzation  in  its  neigh- 
borhood. The  methods  of  instruction  it  has  steadily 
pursued  could  hardly  have  had  another  effect.  It  is 
thus  that  a  member  of  the  Corporation  of  the  Institute 
has  defined  them  :  "  By  means  of  ever  developing  and 
enlarging  laboratories,  the  Institute  has  maintained  the 
principle  that  a  student  shall  not  take  on  the  word  of 
his  teacher  what  is  reasonably  possible  for  him  to  prove 
himself  This  simple,  but  far-reaching,  principle  has 
acted  as  an  extraordinary  leaven  upon  education,  modi- 
fying the  entire  system." 

During  all   this  progress  of  the  practical,  the  arts. 


MEN   AND    MONUMENTS  339 

scantily  nourished  by  the  Puritans  and  their  immedi- 
ate offspring,  were  gradually  coming  to  their  own  in 
Boston.  Of  the  alternately  stormy  and  solemn  be- 
ginnings of  the  drama  we  have  already  had  a  glimpse. 


House  of  Edwin  Booth,  Chestnut  Street. 

The  theatrical  history  of  Boston  does  not  differ  mate- 
rially from  that  of  other  seaboard  cities  in  America. 
There  were  the  same  meteoric  visits  of  foreign  actors, 
prophetic  of  a  later  system  of  stars.  There  was  the 
same  satisfaction  and  sense  of  proprietorship  in  the 
stock  companies  which  long  continued  to  instruct  and 


340  BOSTON 

delight  our  audiences  with  classic  English  comedy. 
Through  all  the  changing  conditions  the  strong  local 
interest  in  the  drama  has  been  accompanied  by  a 
healthy  pride  in  local  actors.  The  city  of  Boston 
did  not  wait  for  the  death  of  Charlotte  Cushman  to 
build  a  schoolhouse  on  the  site  of  her  birthplace  and 
to  give  it  her  name.  To  the  memory  of  Mrs.  Vin- 
cent, a  beloved  member  of  the  stock  company  which 
for  many  years  gave  the  Boston  Museum  its  distinc- 
tion, a  free  hospital  for  women  stands  not  far  from 
where  she  lived.  William  Warren,  her  fellow-player 
in  the  theatre  only  this  year  demolished,  has  his  local 
monument  in  the  portrait  hung  where  every  visitor  to 
the  Museum  of  Fine  Arts  must  see  it.  The  Boston 
theatre-goer  likes  to  remember  that  on  the  stage  of 
the  Boston  Museum  Edwin  Booth,  in  1849,  made  his 
first  theatrical  appearance,  and  that  in  his  house  on 
Chestnut  Street,  now  devoted  to  the  instruction  of 
youth,  some  of  the  most  tranquil  of  his  troubled  years 
were  passed. 

Music,  excepting  psalmody,  met  with  little  more 
favor  in  earlier  Boston  than  the  drama  itself  It  is  a 
strange  association,  therefore,  which  links  the  Park 
Street  Church,  a  central  support  of  Puritan  tradition, 
with  the  first  important  step  of  musical  progress  in 
Boston.  This  was  the  formation  of  the  Handel  and 
Haydn  Society,  in  18 15.  The  Park  Street  Church  had 
an  excellent  choir  of  some  fifty  voices,  and  from  this 
number  many  of  the  singers  for  the  new  organization 
were  drawn.     The  chorus  which  a  month  before  had 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS  343 

sung  the  oratorio  at  the  Peace  Jubilee  in  the  "  Stone 
Chapel  "  to  celebrate  the  conclusion  of  the  War  of 
18 1 2  may  be  regarded  as  the  immediate  forerunner 
of  the  Handel  and  Haydn.  Though  it  was  primarily 
sacred  music  to  which  the  Park  Street  singers  lent 
themselves,  a  constant  improvement  in  the  musical 
standard  of  the  place  resulted  from  the  unbroken 
work  of  this  society.  Thus  the  people  were  ready 
for  the  secular  orchestral  concerts  provided  by  the 
Boston  Academy  of  Music  and  the  Musical  Fund 
Society's  orchestras,  especially  in  the  fourth  decade  of 
the  century.  Itahan  opera,  never  fully  domesticated, 
had  its  periods  of  enthusiastic  welcome.  In  1850 
Barnum,  with  his  showman  laurels  still  to  win,  brought 
Jenny  Lind  to  Boston  for  two  concerts  in  the  Fitch- 
burg  railroad  station.  The  zeal  of  his  agent  and  of 
the  community  were  well  matched,  for  tickets  were 
sold  to  a  thousand  persons  more  than  the  station  could 
hold.  To  this  circumstance  and  its  untoward  results  the 
building  of  the  Boston  Music  Hall,  as  a  place  in  which 
Jenny  Lind's  unexampled  power  over  American  audi- 
ences could  properly  be  exercised,  is  said  to  have  been 
due.  In  1852  the  Music  Hall  was  opened.  In  1863 
the  great  organ,  so  long  the  special  glory  of  musical 
Boston,  was  dedicated  therein.  By  this  time,  indeed, 
there  was  a  musical  Boston,  towards  the  making  of 
which  a  single  individual,  John  Sullivan  Dwight,  and 
a  single  club,  the  Harvard  Musical  Association,  the 
outgrowth  of  a  college  musical  society,  had  done  all 
that  one  person  and  one  organization  could    accom- 


344 


BOSTON 


^ 


y 


^ ._, 


Copyright,  1899,  by  Bela  L.  Pratt. 


From  a  Copley  Print,  copyrig-tit,  1899,  by  Curtis  &  Cameroa. 

Phillips  Brooks. 
Bust  by  Bela  L.  Pratt. 


plish.  In  1867  ^^  New  England  Conservatory  of 
Music,  whose  pupils  have  carried  its  lessons  into  all 
regions  of  the  country,  was  established.  Early  in 
the  eighties  the  Boston  Symphony  Orchestra,  founded 
and  steadily  supported  by  individual  generosity,  began 
its  all-important  work  of  teaching  the  public  to  expect 
and  to  know  the  best  in   orchestral  music.     Through 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS 


345 


all  these  agencies,  strengthened  by  the  devotion  of 
musicians  and  amateurs  of  music  whose  names  would 
make  too  long  a  catalogue,  the  progress  of  their  art 
in  Boston  since  the  days  of  the  Park  Street  choir  and 
the  Peace  Jubilee  of  1815  has  kept  an  even  pace  with 
the  passing  years. 

The  annals  of  painting  and  sculpture  in  Boston  pre- 
sent for  most  of  the  nineteenth  century  a  list  of  names 
not  long  but  memorable.  What  may  be  called  the 
organization  of  these  arts  has  been  accomplished 
chiefly  within  the  past  thirty  years.  With  the  name 
and  work  of  John  Singleton  Copley,  albeit  transplanted 
from  Boston  to  England  for  the  second  half  of  his  long 
life,  an  inspiring  tradition  passed  from  the  eighteenth 
into  the  nineteenth  century.  It  was  carried  on  by 
Washington  Allston,  a  South  Carolinian  by  birth, 
allied  to  Boston  through  marriage  into  the  Channing 
and  the  Dana  families,  and  by  residence,  after  his  two 
returns  from  Europe,  in  Boston  and  in  Cambridgeport. 
For  more  than  twenty  years  also  the  Rhode  Islander, 
Gilbert  Stuart,  made  his  home  in  Boston,  and  enriched 
its  more  fortunate  houses  with  many  of  his  best  por- 
traits. From  Boston  Horatio  Greenough  went  to 
Florence,  first  of  the  long-lived  Italian  colony  of ^ 
American  sculptors.  To  Boston,  after  years  of  study 
in  Europe  and  a  shorter  period  of  painting  in  New- 
port, came  William  Morris  Hunt  in  1862,  and  here 
much  of  his  most  characteristic  work  was  done.  The 
short  list  of  names  might  be  made  a  little  longer,  yet 
these  will  serve  to  show  that  the  end  of  the  century, 


346  BOSTON 

with  its  troop  of  painters,  was  not  needed  to  bring  to 
Boston  the  influences  of  foreign  masters  and  methods. 
The  annual  and  permanent  exhibitions  of  paintings  and 
sculpture  in  the  Athenaeum  gallery,  for  half  a  century 
from  1826,  did  their  service  in  cultivating  a  pubhc  taste 
for  art.  In  1869  a  bequest  of  arms  and  armor  to  the 
Athenaeum  collection  presented  difficulties  of  exhibition 
which  only  a  new  building  could  solve.  Thus  the 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts  became  a  necessity.  Before  it 
was  completed  the  armor  went  the  way  of  many  valu- 
ables in  the  fire  of  1872.  But  subscriptions  for  the 
new  Museum,  in  sums  from  ^25,000  down  to  contri- 
butions of  less  than  a  dollar,  had  secured  the  erection 
of  the  building,  now  almost  outgrown,  which  was 
opened  to  the  pubhc  on  July  3,  1876.  The  best  of 
the  Athenaeum  collection  was  transferred  to  its  walls 
and  corridors.  Private  bequests  and  loans  have  helped 
in  establishing  its  present  usefulness  to  the  few  and  to 
the  many,  for  it  has  never  been  forgotten  that  both 
the  many  and  the  few  gave  according  to  their  abihty 
toward  its  creation,  and  to  this  Boston  public  the 
Museum  conspicuously  belongs. 

As  there  are  institutions  belonging  to  a  whole  com- 
munity, so  there  are  men.  Of  these,  in  later  years, 
the  figure  standing  forth  most  vividly  is  that  of  Phillips 
Brooks  —  and  with  him  this  rambhng  survey  of  men 
and  monuments  of  the  nineteenth  century  must  come 
to  a  close.  In  his  singleness  of  effiDrt  and  achievement 
he  clearly  typified  the  diflference  between  the  earlier  and 
later  years  of  the  century.     Quincy  and  Everett  could 


Trinity  Church  Tower. 


MEN    AND    MONUMENTS  349 

excel,  as  public  characters,  in  a  dozen  pursuits. 
Phillips  Brooks,  rector  of  Trinity  Church  and  bishop 
of  Massachusetts,  devoted  his  undivided  energies  to 
the  calling  of  the  Christian  ministry.  Yet  in  another 
and  a  true  sense  he  too  was  a  public  character.  In  an 
age  of  specialism,  he  was  the  specialist  in  religion,  —  a 
subject  happily  broad  enough,  as  he  saw  it,  to  save  one 
of  his  nature  from  the  perils  of  narrowness.  His  per- 
sonal background,  hke  that  of  the  writers  who  made 
the  Boston  of  their  day  our  "literary  centre,"  related 
him  in  every  way  to  the  best  traditions  of  the  place. 
Like  the  leaders  of  "  the  Boston  ReHgion,"  in  an  ear- 
lier generation,  he  was  inherently  and  by  inheritance  a 
true  leader  of  men.  Unlike  them  he  had  the  advan- 
tage of  accepting  a  system  of  faith  defined,  not  by  a 
local  term,  nor  yet  too  rigidly,  as  he  and  many  others 
have  thought,  for  application  to  the  needs  of  modern 
life.  Thus  in  many  ways  a  typical  product  of  local 
conditions,  he  could  yet  bring  to  the  local  life  an  influ- 
ence which  greatly  broadened  its  limits.  Surely  in  a 
special  degree  for  those  amongst  whom  he  lived,  he 
wrought  a  quickened  spiritual  sense,  a  richer  tolerance 
and  understanding  between  man  and  man.  The  space 
before  Trinity  Church  may  still  afford  to  wait  the 
monument  which  is  to  stand  there,  for  the  people  of 
Boston  hardly  need  to  be  reminded  yet  that  their  city 
is  a  better  place  because  Phillips  Brooks  lived  in  it. 


XI 


WATER    AND    FIRE 


w 


r 


W 


E  have  regarded  many  manifes- 
tations of  the  spirit  of  Boston. 
It  remains  to  consider  two  important 
aspects  of  its  present  outward  form. 
Within  little  more  than  the  period 
ascribed  to  a  single  generation  of 
men,  it  has  become  a  new  city, 
'f  both  in  the  favorite  region  of 
'^*^''  residences  and  in  the  district 
in  or  near  which  the  chief  busi- 
ness of  the  city  is  conducted. 
In  the  making  of  the  present 
Boston,  the  conquests  of  water 
and  fire  have  played  an  impor- 
tant part.  Just  as  the  early  town  was  "  wharfed  out  with 
great  industry  and  cost  *'  into  the  sea,  so  has  the  modern 
city  grown  over  the  waters  that  for  more  than  two 
centuries  separated  it,  but  for  a  slender  neck  of  earth, 
from  the  southern  and  western  uplands  of  Roxbury 
and  Brookline.  The  early  settlement,  devastated  so 
often  by  fires  that,  according  to  Cotton  Mather,  it 
gained  the  proverbial  name  of  Lost-Town,  recovered 
and  renewed  itself  time  after  time.  In  like  manner 
the  generation  now  passing  has  witnessed  the  destruc- 

350 


Trinity  Church,  Summer 
Street,  after  Great  'Fire. 


WATER    AND    FIRE 


351 


tion  and  rebuilding  of  a  great  commercial  quarter. 
The  story  of  these  two  changes  must  be  told  in  every 
account  of  Boston. 

There  is  no  stronger  proof  of  the  true  citizenship 
of  a  Boston  man  of  fifty  years  or  more  than  his  point- 
ing out  the  street  corners,  in  the  Back  Bay  district, 
where  as  a  boy  he  used  to  swim,  fish,  or  shoot.  The 
tidal  flats  and  waters  which  have  grown  into  paved 
avenues  and  luxurious  dweUing-houses  must  have  been 
well  populated  —  if  we  accept  all  the  reminiscences  — 
with  adventurous  youth  in  every  stage  of  undress.  We 
read  of  Colonel  T.  H.  Perkins,  in  a  still  earlier  genera- 
tion, shooting  snipe  on  the  present  playground  of  the 
Common,  and  gunning  for  teal  in  August,  with  Harri- 
son Gray  Otis,  on  a  creek  about  where  Dover  Street  is 
now  to  be  found.  It  is  still  more  difficult  to  realize  that 
only  a  year  or  two  before  i860  the  western  boundary 
of  the  Public  Garden  was  a  brown  picket  fence,  with 
a  muddy  beach  at  its  foot.  It  was  the  happy  thought 
of  a  few  boys  —  now  men  in  the  prime  of  life,  some  of 
whose  names  have  become  familiar  to  the  American 
public  —  to  use  this  beach,  near  the  present  beginning 
of  Commonwealth  Avenue,  for  an  elaborate  game  of 
buried  treasure.  Their  practice  of  mystery  was  to  bury 
at  this  spot  an  old  trunk,  containing  coin  finally  amount- 
ing to  two  or  three  dollars,  and  at  a  later  day  joyfully 
to  discover  and  exhume  it.  Other  boys  of  meaner 
spirit  must  have  seen  them  at  their  dark  work,  for  the 
day  came  when  the  digging  brought  no  trunk  to  light. 
Each  member  of  the  secret  brotherhood  suspected  his 


2S^  BOSTON 

fellows  of  treachery,  and  like  all  true  diggers  for  doub- 
loons and  pieces  of  eight,  they  quarrelled  and  dis- 
banded. The  catalogue  of  unconventionalities  in  what 
has  so  rapidly  become  the  very  home  of  convention 
might  be  extended  indefinitely.  Their  chief  value 
would  lie  in  emphasizing  a  remarkable  transformation. 
Yet  the  change  from  happy  hunting-ground  to  modern 
city  has  not  been  the  work  of  a  day. 

The  initial  step  in  the  great  change  was  taken  in 
1 8 14,  when  the  General  Court  granted  a  charter  em- 
powering the  Boston  and  Roxbury  Mill  Corporation 
to  build  a  dam  from  the  Charles  Street  end  of  Beacon 
Street  to  the  opposite  point  of  land  in  Brookline,  and 
a  cross-dam  from  a  point  in  Roxbury  to  this  main 
structure  which  became  known  as  the  Mill-Dam,  or 
Western  Avenue.  Each  dam  was  to  be  also  a  road- 
way, with  toll-gates  for  tribute  from  travellers.  An 
important  element  of  the  project  was  the  use  and 
leasing  of  power  from  the  confined  tide-water  for  mill 
purposes.  The  undertaking  had  a  purely  commercial 
basis.  In  1821  the  Mill-Dam  was  opened  for  passen- 
gers, and  the  spokesman  of  the  occasion  reminded  his 
hearers  of  the  time  when  Boston  had  but  one  connec- 
tion with  the  main  land.  "  Then,"  he  said,  "  our  town 
resembled  a  hand,  but  it  was  a  closed  one.  It  is  now 
open  and  well  spread.  Charlestown,  Cambridge,  South 
Boston,  and  Craigie's  bridges  have  added  each  a  finger, 
and  lately  our  enterprising  citizens  have  joined  the 
firm  and  substantial  thumb  over  which  we  now  ride.'* 
The  more  liberal  image,  drawn  by  Mather  Byles,  of 


WATER   AND    FIRE 


353 


**  Boston,  Mistress  of  the  Towns, 
Whom  the  pleas' d  Bay,  with  am'rous  arms  surrounds,'* 

had  already  been  rendered  obsolete. 

Before  long  it  became  evident  that  the  Mill  Cor- 
poration had  enough  to  do  in  caring  for  the  new 
roadways,  which,  planted  with  straggling  trees,  became 
popular  drives  in  and  out  of  the  city.  Accordingly, 
the  stockholders  organized  the  Boston  Water-Power 
Company,  which  in  1832  assumed  control  of  the  mills, 
the  water  power,  and  the  lands  to  the  south  of  the 
main  dam,  leaving  the  roads  and  the  northerly  lands 
in  charge  of  the  older  corporation.  The  conflicting 
interests  of  the  companies,  the  city,  and  private  land- 
owners, were  adjusted  by  compromises  —  the  first  of 
many  to  be  made  —  before  the  complete  transforma- 
tion of  the  region  could  be  brought  about.  The  rail- 
roads to  Providence  and  Worcester  were  incorporated 
in  1 83 1.  The  Mill  Corporation  and  the  Power  Com- 
pany resented  the  encroachments  on  their  preserves  — 
all  the  more  because  their  stock,  legitimately  allied  with 
water,  lost  half  its  value.  But  the  railroads  were  inevi- 
table :  so  were  the  consequences  of  their  coming.  The 
worst  of  these  was  that  the  Back  Bay,  with  its  impaired 
flowage,  became,  according  to  a  report  on  drainage  to 
the  city  council  in  1849,  "nothing  less  than  a  great 
cesspool."  A  sentimental  attachment  to  the  sheet  of 
water  as  it  had  been,  kept  many  persons  from  realizing 
what  had  come  to  pass.  Yet  a  true  foresight  demanded 
the  adoption  of  radical  measures. 

To  the  state  authorities  of  Massachusetts  belongs  the 


2s6  BOSTON 

credit  of  framing  these  measures  and  patiently  bringing 
them  to  a  practical  issue.  The  reports  of  the  Back  Bay 
Commissioners  tell  a  long  story  of  preparation  and  action. 
In  1852  they  pointed  out  the  success  with  which  the 
Mill-Dam  immediately  below  Charles  Street  had  been 
extended  for  the  building  of  houses  now  facing  the 
Public  Garden.  A  vast  extension  of  the  same  methods, 
they  said  in  effect,  would  solve  the  double  problem  of 
sanitation  and  space  for  the  growing  city.  According 
to  an  ancient  colonial  ordinance  the  commonwealth 
could  lay  a  just  claim  to  all  lands  adjoining  its  shores, 
below  the  line  of  private  rights.  In  the  Back  Bay 
there  were  two  hundred  acres  waiting  for  the  state  to 
redeem.  Before  any  definite  steps  could  be  taken, 
however,  it  was  necessary  to  untangle  complications, 
almost  hopeless,  with  the  corporations,  with  private 
owners,  and,  worst  of  all,  with  the  city  government. 
By  an  unfortunate  tripartite  agreement  in  1856 
between  the  state,  the  city,  and  the  Water-Power 
Company,  the  city  acquired  an  unrestricted  right  in  a 
narrow  "  gore  "  of  land  skirting  the  Public  Garden  on 
the  west.  For  a  time  there  was  grave  danger  that  the 
municipal  authorities,  pursuing  their  general  policy  of 
obstruction,  would  dispose  of  this  land  for  buildings 
quite  unworthy  of  the  greater  project  of  the  state.  The 
difficulty  was  settled  by  an  exchange  between  city  and 
state,  through  which  the  state  was  enabled  to  lay  out 
Arlington  Street  as  planned,  and  the  city  became  pos- 
sessed of  a  tract  of  equal  value  farther  to  the  westward. 
Even  as  late  as  June  of  1858,  when  the  work  of  filling 


WATER   AND    FIRE 


357 


in  had  begun,  Arthur  Gilman,  an  architect  deeply  inter- 
ested in  the  undertaking,  wrote  an  open  letter  to  the 
Mayor,  protesting  against  the  course  of  the  obstruc- 
tionists, and  putting  the  desperate  inquiry,  "  When 
Charles  Street  has  become  the  ^  Charing  Cross '  — 
eastward  of  which  is  devoted  to  the  business  city  alone 
—  where  are  we  to  look  for  the  Westminster  of  that 
day  ?  "  So  far  as  the  city  stood  in  the  way  of  progress, 
its  policy  is  at  this  day  difficult  of  comprehension  ;  for 
Boston  had  everything  to  gain,  and  the  state  was  incur- 
ring every  financial  risk. 

In  January  of  1857  the  Commissioners  appointed 
in  the  year  just  ended  could  inform  the  legislature  that 
the  chief  obstacles  had  virtually  been  cleared  away. 
A  brief  passage  from  their  report  shows  that  they  at 
least  had  a  full  realization  of  the  importance  of  what 
they  were  doing.  "  The  territory  in  question,"  they 
said  of  the  Back  Bay,  "is  now  a  useless  and  unsightly 
waste.  There  is,  at  the  same  time,  a  palpable  lack 
of  room  for  dwelling-houses  in  and  near  the  city 
of  Boston.  Stores  are  usurping  the  streets  formerly 
occupied  by  mansions,  rents  are  enormously  high,  and 
it  is  becoming  a  serious  problem  where  the  people 
whose  business  draws  them  to  the  metropolis  of  New 
England  and  the  capital  of  the  state  shall  be  accom- 
modated. The  commonwealth's  lands  in  the  Back 
Bay  are  situated  in  precisely  the  most  eligible  location 
for  dwelling-houses.  The  conversion  of  a  waste  of 
water  into  a  magnificent  system  of  streets  and  squares, 
with    dwelling-houses   for  a  numerous   population,  is 


358  BOSTON 

a  transformation  dictated  by  the  soundest  statesman- 
ship and  the  wisest  political  economy."  So  indeed 
the  event  proved  it  to  be. 

There  were  doubts  in  plenty  about  the  very  possi- 
bihty  of  handling  the  great  undertaking  with  success. 
Even  in  i860  the  Transcript  quoted  "the  sagacious 
prediction  of  a  '  young'  old  fogy,"  that  within  the  next 
twenty  years  a  dozen  houses  might  be  built  in  the 
new  territory.  In  the  same  year  the  following  sceptical 
suggestion  was  brought  forward :  "  There  can  be  no 
question  but  that  a  vast  quantity  of  this  land  will  re- 
main unpurchased  for  thirty,  forty,  or  even  fifty  years. 
It  has  taken  forty  years  to  build  forty  houses  on  the 
Western  Avenue,  with  their  unrivalled  advantages  of 
air  and  view,  both  in  front  and  rear,  and  there  are  not 
now,  and  will  not  be  for  some  years  to  come,  a  hun- 
dred men  in  Boston  who  are  prepared  to  build  those 
'  first-class  houses '  to  which  the  plan  is  exclusively 
adapted."  These  words  are  taken  from  the  preface 
to  a  pamphlet  containing  the  petition  which  George 
H.  Snelling  offered  to  the  legislature  in  1859.  -^^^ 
plea,  embodying  the  belief  that  "  water  is  to  the  land- 
scape what  the  eye  is  to  the  face,"  was  that  the  plan  of 
the  Commissioners  should  be  modified  by  substituting 
for  Commonwealth  Avenue  and  the  house-lots  on  each 
side  of  it  a  broad  basin  of  water  running  east  and  west 
through  the  lands  of  the  state.  The  prevalence  of 
southwest  winds  in  summer  was  warmly  urged  as  a 
reason  for  leaving  this  space  unfilled.  The  plan  re- 
ceived the  cordial  support  of  certain  newspapers  and 


WATER   AND    FIRE  359 

men  of  influence.  A  letter  from  Charles  Sumner 
expressed  his  gratitude  for  Mr.  Snelling's  "  timely 
intervention  to  save  our  Boston  Common,  by  keeping 
it  open  to  the  western  breezes  and  to  the  setting  sun." 
But  the  Common  was  reserved  for  subsequent  salva- 
tions, and  the  Commissioners'  plan  remained  unaltered. 


^-m- 


Site  of  Mechanics'  Fair  Building,  1871. 

For  the  actual  labor  of  filling  the  territory  the  Com- 
missioners entered  into  arrangements  with  a  firm  of 
railroad  contractors,  Goss  and  Munson,  who  began 
their  work  about  the  middle  of  May,  1858.  The  hills 
of  Boston  had  by  this  time  yielded  all  the  earth  they 
could  spare  to  the  surrounding  waters.  It  was  neces- 
sary, therefore,  to  go  afield  for  the  gravel  demanded  for 
the  new  work.  To  expedite  its  transportation  from 
Needham,  whence  it  was  digged,  the  contractors  built 
six  miles  of  railroad.  Their  trains  of  thirty-five  cars 
each  made  sixteen  trips  a  day,  and  nine  or  ten  by  night. 
Steam  excavators,  filling  a  car  with  two  disgorgements, 
could  load  a  train  in  ten  minutes.  Every  forty-five  min- 
utes one  of  these  trains  arrived  at  the  Back  Bay.  In  a 
single  day  the  space  of  about  two  house-lots  was  filled. 

The  contractors  received  their  first  payment  out 
of  the   proceeds  of  the   sale   of  flats  to   the  pioneer 


36o  BOSTON 

buyers,  William  W.  Goddard  and  T.  Bigelow  Law- 
rence. Later  payments  were  made  through  the  dis- 
posal of  lands  actually  filled,  and  by  the  transfer  of 
unfilled  spots  to  the  contractors  themselves,  who  in 
time  turned  them  into  money.  Before  the  work  had 
gone  far  there  were  scenes  more  characteristic  of  a 
western  "  boom  "  town  than  of  the  long-established 
seaboard  city.  In  October  of  i860,  for  example,  the 
Advertiser  pictures  the  auctioneer  of  house-lots  taking 
"  his  station  at  the  corner  of  Commonwealth  Avenue 
and  Berkeley  Street,  upon  a  platform  of  boards  laid 
across  the  corner  of  the  rough  fence  which  has  been  put 
up  to  protect  the  park  in  the  middle  of  the  avenue." 
Nine  months  earlier  the  same  "  respectable  daily  "  had 
made  the  report :  "  The  whole  area  east  of  Berkeley 
Street  is  now  entirely  filled.  We  say  that  the  comple- 
tion of  the  remainder  is  a  matter  of  perfect  certainty." 
In  May  of  the  same  year  the  Transcript  reported  the 
houses  on  Arlington  Street  nearing  completion,  and 
"  Dr.  Gannett's  church  six  or  eight  feet  above  ground." 
Through  all  this  period  of  early  building  the  sales  of 
still  newer  land  were  going  steadily  forward.  The 
Mill  Corporation,  with  its  holdings  on  the  water  side 
of  Beacon  Street,  and  the  Water-Power  Company, 
with  the  tract  south  of  the  building  lots  on  Boylston 
Street, — including  the  districts  of  Columbus  and  Hunt- 
ington avenues,  —  had  been  converted  by  events  into 
great  land  companies.  By  an  early  arrangement  with 
the  Water-Power  Company,  the  Commissioners  had 
brought  the  most  desirable  parts  of  what  is  now  called 


WATER    AND    FIRE  363 

the  Back  Bay  into  the  hands  of  the  state.  The  record 
of  its  success  as  a  land  company  is  brief  and  convinc- 
ing. Without  the  expenditure  of  a  dollar  its  treasury 
was  enriched  by  three  millions.  Amongst  the  good 
uses  to  which  its  gains  were  put,  should  be  remembered 
the  liberal  grant  of  land  to  the  Institute  of  Technology 
and  Society  of  Natural  History,  the  great  increase 
of  the  state  school  fund,  and  the  outright  grants  of 
1 1 00,000  to  the  Agassiz  Museum  at  Harvard,  1 50,000 
to  Tufts  College,  ^2 5,000  each  to  Williams,  Amherst, 
and  the  Wesleyan  Academy  at  Wilbraham.  The  land 
speculators,  private  and  corporate,  thus  paid  their  in- 
direct tribute  to  the  cause  of  education.  The  entire 
history  of  the  enterprise  presents  a  conspicuous  ex- 
ample of  the  successful  conduct  of  a  local  improve- 
ment by  the  government  of  a  state.  Though  the 
city  authorities  offered  for  a  time  more  of  hindrance 
than  of  help,  their  successors  in  office  have  found 
themselves  ruling  what  has  grown  to  be  a  new  city. 
Many  inhabitants,  following  Dr.  Holmes's  example  of 
"justifiable  domicide,"  quitted  the  older  overcrowded 
regions  for  the  new.  To  the  transformation  of  the 
Back  Bay  the  city,  exclusive  of  outlying  districts  ac- 
quired from  time  to  time,  owes  much  of  its  increase 
from  the  783  acres  of  the  original  peninsula  to  its 
present  extent  of  1829  acres.  The  annexations  from 
without — South  Boston  in  1804,  East  Boston  in 
1830,  Roxbury  in  1868,  Dorchester  in  1870,  Brighton, 
Charlestown,  and  West  Roxbury  in  1874  —  have  in- 
creased the  city  territory  by  more  than  twenty  thousand 


364  BOSTON 

additional  acres.  But  by  steady  degrees  the  "made 
land  "  has  become  the  site  not  only  of  the  best  resi- 
dences, but  of  pleasure-grounds,  museums,  libraries, 
churches,  clubs,  hotels,  auditoriums,  and  nearly  all 
things  that  contribute  to  "  the  humanities  "  of  modern 
Boston. 

When  Cotton  Mather  put  on  record  the  sobriquet 
of  Lost-Town,  he  went  on  to  say  of  Boston,  as  Robert 
C.  Winthrop  reminded  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society  in  1872:  "Never  was  any  town  under  the 
cope  of  heaven  more  liable  to  be  laid  in  ashes, 
either  through  the  carelessness  or  the  wickedness  of 
them  that  sleep  in  it.  That  such  a  combustible  heap 
of  contiguous  houses  yet  stands,  it  may  be  called  a 
standing  miracle.  It  is  not  because  the  watchman 
keeps  the  city.  .  .  .  No,  it  is  from  Thy  watchful  pro- 
tection, O  Thou  keeper  of  Boston,  who  neither  slum- 
bers nor  sleeps."  In  1872,  when  the  greatest  of  the 
"  Great  Fires  "  to  which  Boston  has  been  subject  visited 
the  city,  there  was  no  Cotton  Mather  to  put  his  inter- 
pretation upon  it.  The  work  of  less  than  twenty-four 
hours,  however,  was  comparable  in  its  importance  to 
the  labor  of  years  in  the  Back  Bay,  and  the  record 
of  its  causes  and  effects  has  been  written  with  even 
greater  fulness  of  detail. 

It  was  soon  after  seven  o'clock  on  the  evening  of 
Saturday,  November  9,  1872,  that  the  fire  —  its  origin 
still  unknown  —  was  first  discovered  in  a  wholesale 
dry-goods  house  at  the  corner  of  Summer  and  Kings- 
ton streets.     The  quarter  in  which  this  building  stood 


WATER    AND    FIRE  ;^6s 

had  been  occupied  through  much  of  the  first  half  cen- 
tury by  the  most  comfortable  residences  in  Boston  — 
square  brick  mansions  often  surrounded  by  gardens, 
to  be  recalled  more  vividly  perhaps  by  certain  streets 
in  Salem,  Providence,  and  Portsmouth  than  by  any 
other  existing  regions.  About  1840  trade  began  to 
invade  the  district,  and  in  thirty  years  had  come  the 
change  creating  the  need  which  the  Back  Bay  was 
satisfying.  The  new  business  buildings  —  the  head- 
quarters of  the  wool,  cotton,  leather,  and  other  indus- 
tries—  were  dignified  structures  of  granite  and  brick, 
surmounted  too  often  by  mansard  roofs  of  wooden 
construction.  When  the  fire  broke  out  the  alarm,  for 
some  reason,  was  not  rung  till  the  flames  had  gained 
vigorous  headway.  A  further  misfortune  lay  in  the  fact 
that  the  horses  of  the  city,  including  those  of  the  fire 
department,  were  suffering  from  the  epidemic  disease 
known  as  epizootic.  The  entire  transportation  busi- 
ness of  the  city  had  been  seriously  crippled.  "  It  was 
no  uncommon  sight,"  an  observer  has  written,  "  to  see 
the  porters,  clerks,  messengers,  and  stevedores  taking 
upon  themselves  the  service  of  draught  animals,  drag- 
ging heavy  loads  from  store  or  warehouse  to  the  various 
depots."  What  they  took  as  a  joke  in  the  prosecution 
of  work  by  daylight  became  a  serious  matter  in  the 
emergency  of  fire  on  Saturday  night  in  a  deserted 
business  region.  The  fire  department,  however,  had 
guarded  against  this  danger  by  providing  a  force  of 
extra  men  to  take  the  place  of  the  incapacitated  horses, 
and  the  seriousness  of  the  handicap  has  probably  been 


i^GG  BOSTON 

overrated.  Be  that  as  it  may,  the  firemen  summoned 
by  rapidly  succeeding  calls  immediately  saw  that  they 
were  confronted  with  difficulties  of  the  first  magnitude. 
From  the  fireman's  point  of  view  it  was  a  grave 
matter  that  the  water-pipes  and  hydrants  had  not 
been  enlarged  to  meet  the  demands  involved  in  the 
change  from  residence  to  business  streets.  In  a  com- 
mon fire  this  would  have  been  bad  enough ;  but  here, 
as  the  veriest  amateur  could  see,  was  a  fire  of  extraor- 
dinary fury  and  danger.  With  incredible  speed  the 
flames  spread  up  and  down  Summer  Street,  extended 
along  the  lower  side  of  Washington  Street  as  far  as  the 
Old  South  Church  —  upon  which  many  spectators 
thought  they  were  looking  for  the  last  time  —  and 
crossed  Milk  Street,  though  less  violently  than  if  the 
Post-Office  building,  in  process  of  construction,  had 
not  blocked  the  way.  Eastward  and  northward  they 
extended  to  the  water  front  and  beyond  Pearl  Street, 
where  all  the  buildings  were  aflame  in  hardly  ^Yt 
minutes  from  the  time  when  the  first  fire  appeared  in 
them.  Engines  had  come  from  many  neighboring 
places.  The  skies  themselves  were  said  to  have  been 
a  beckoning  Hght  for  sixty  miles  inland.  The  Sunday 
trains  brought  thousands  of  visitors  to  the  panic-stricken 
city.  Thieves  from  without  and  within  pHed  their 
trade.  Extra  police  and  a  brigade  of  militia  were 
called  out  to  keep  the  confusion  within  bounds. 
Through  the  night  and  early  morning  hours  poor 
families  from  the  threatened  region  to  the  south  of 
Summer  Street  were  seen   dragging    their    household 


WATER   AND    FIRE  369 

goods  to  the  Common.  Merchants  and  their  clerks 
were  bearing  what  they  could  rescue  of  valuable  papers 
and  wares  to  the  same  and  more  remote  places  of  safety. 
When  horses  could  not  be  got  to  help  in  the  work, 
oxen  were  pressed  into  service.  The  nearly  continuous 
roar  of  falling  walls,  explosions  of  gas  and  of  gunpowder, 
used  with  doubtful  effect  to  remove  the  materials  for 
further  progress  of  the  fire,  added  their  terrors  to  the 
night.  It  was  not  till  four  o'clock  on  Sunday  after- 
noon that  the  fire  was  really  under  control.  "  When 
the  sun  went  down  at  evening,"  wrote  a  contemporary 
annalist  of  the  great  disaster,  whose  words  are  a  warn- 
ing specimen  of  the  kind  of  writing  it  immediately 
called  forth,  "  the  fire  fiend,  who  had  slowly  but 
surely  wormed  himself  through  the  commercial  loins 
of  our  city,  eating  out  the  very  vitals  of  our  trade  and 
our  industries,  was  chained,  and  the  pale  moon  came 
slowly  up  to  throw  its  lambent  rays  into  smoky 
clouds  that  rose  from  the  vast  domain  of  smoulder- 
ing ruins." 

In  the  language  of  cold  fact,  sixty-seven  acres  of 
land,  thickly  covered  with  buildings  to  the  number 
of  767,  were  laid  waste.  The  estimated  loss  of  prop- 
erty was  more  than  ^75,000,000.  In  this  figure  is 
included  the  value  not  only  of  buildings  destroyed 
but  of  the  merchandise  stored  in  them.  In  addi- 
tion to  the  raw  materials  and  many  manufactured 
products  which  were  lost,  it  happened  that  the  store- 
houses of  the  district  contained  the  valuable  libraries, 
paintings,  and  collected  treasures  of  art  belonging  to  a 


370  BOSTON 

number  of  persons  who  were  travelling  abroad  or  for 
other  reasons  had  stored  their  possessions  for  safe-keep- 
ing. Many  of  these  objects  which  nothing  could  re- 
place were  swept  out  of  existence,  and  fourteen  lives 
were  lost.  Yet  the  disaster  was  chiefly  commercial. 
Bankrupted  insurance  companies,  whose  worthless 
shares  were  held  in  many  instances  by  the  very  mer- 
chants whose  more  tangible  wealth  had  gone  up  in 
smoke,  were  melancholy  types  and  monuments  of  the 
wholesale  ruin. 

Even  while  the  fires  were  burning,  however,  the 
losers  were  preparing  to  recover  themselves.  The  Mon- 
day morning  papers  told  the  public  where  the  wares 
of  dispossessed  merchants  might  be  found.  In  hotel 
dining-rooms  dry-goods  were  offered  for  sale,  and 
tailors  made  ready  to  continue  their  work.  Rough 
temporary  buildings  of  corrugated  iron  went  up  here 
and  there.  For  the  wage-earners  thrown  out  of 
employment  —  an  army  of  shop-girls  was  disbanded 
—  charitable  plans  were  at  once  made  and  acted  upon. 
The  basement  of  the  Park  Street  Church,  as  in  the  war- 
time days  of  the  Sanitary  Commission,  became  a  dis- 
tributing centre  for  organized  help.  Local  subscriptions 
for  those  who  suffered  most  directly  from  the  disaster 
quickly  rose  beyond  the  sum  of  1300,000.  Chicago, 
grateful  for  the  help  it  had  received  from  Boston  a 
year  before  under  a  similar  affliction,  made  generous 
but  superfluous  offers  of  aid.  "  We  will  share  with 
you  whatever  we  have  left,"  was  the  message  from  the 
western  city.      Looking  farther  into  the  future,  the  state 


WATER   AND    FIRE  371 

and  the  city  passed  building  and  other  laws  calculated 
to  reduce  to  a  minimum  the  chances  of  such  another 
disaster.  The  calamity  was  turned  into  good  account 
also  by  seizing  the  opportunity  it  offered  to  straighten 
and  widen  streets,  some  of  which  it  was  difficult  even  to 
find  under  the  heaps  of  fallen  buildings.  The  period 
of  rebuilding,  promptly  undertaken,  was  not  the  most 
fortunate  in  American  architecture.  But  the  mansard' 
roof,  fatally  responsible  for  the  rapid  spread  of  the 
flames,  had  received  its  deathblow. 

Thus  a  new  quarter,  better  in  every  way  than  the 
old,  came  into  being.  It  was  not  a  matter  of  outward 
form  alone,  for  the  spirit  of  Boston  had  truly  shown 
itself  in  the  brave  recovery.  As  from  the  waters  of  the 
Back  Bay,  so  from  the  ashes  of  the  Great  Fire,  rose 
one  of  the  most  familiar  portions  of  the  city  as  it  is 
known  to  men  to-day. 


XII 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE 


1^^ 


I 


N    the    pages    before    this 
final  chapter  the  attempt 
has  been  made  to  pass  in  re- 
view the  sahent  facts  of  Bos- 
ton history,  and  to  gain  some 
11  ^    '*  *!iii     i  i\         acquaintance  with  the  persons 

chiefly  concerned  in  them. 
It  has  been  seen  how  the 
place  had  its  beginning  as 
the  chief  settlement  in  a  col- 
ony of  rare  independence, 
due  both  to  the  character  of 
its  founders  and  to  conditions 
in  contemporary  England. 
In  the  local  life  of  the  seven- 
teenth and  eighteenth  centu- 
ries the  circumstances  have 
been  found  which  made  the 
community  ripe  for  the  events 
of  the  revolutionary  period. 
It  was  not  only  the  fact,  but  almost  the  inevitable  fact, 
that  Samuel  Adams  and  other  chieftains  of  revolt  were 
Boston  men.  With  the  establishment  of  independence 
we  have  seen  the  reasserted  primacy  of  maritime  inter- 

372 


Entrance  to 
South  Terminal  Station. 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE     373 

ests,  and  the  growth  of  a  powerful  commercial  class 
naturally  allied  with  the  political  party  doomed  to 
overthrow  in  the  progress  of  national  life.  The  impor- 
tant influences  of  foreign  commerce  and  domestic  trade 
and  manufacture  have  been  regarded  with  some  refer- 
ence to  their  effect  upon  the  people  of  Boston.  So 
in  the  domain  of  spirit  and  mind  the  peculiar  debt  of 
the  community  to  the  Unitarian  movement  and  to  the 
nineteenth-century  flowering  of  literary  tendencies  has 
been  recognized.  We  have  found  at  the  same  time 
that  the  greater  preachers  and  writers  were  not  of  a  race 
apart,  but  truly  represented  the  best  element  of  the  na- 
tive citizenship,  the  better  for  their  leaven.  To  all  these 
phases  of  life  was  added  the  flavor  of  moral  enthusiasm 
which  could  not  be  absent  from  the  headquarters  of  a 
scheme  of  reform  so  far-reaching  as  that  which  went 
by  the  name  of  antislavery.  In  less  coordinated  form 
stood  the  separate  works  of  men  whose  monuments 
hold  a  conspicuous  place  in  the  community.  Finally, 
the  topographic  changes  wrought  by  the  elements 
which  create  and  destroy  a  landscape  have  been  noticed. 
If  a  scientist  can  reconstruct  an  unknown  fish  from  a 
single  bone,  it  should  require  no  occult  sense  to  trace 
in  the  existing  city  of  the  twentieth  century  the  results 
of  the  various  forces  which  for  nearly  three  hundred 
years  have  in  turn  directed  the  men  and  women  of  the 
place. 

There  is  yet  another  influence  to  be  noted,  though 
with  nothing  of  the  detail  required  for  the  points 
already  enumerated.     It  is  almost  enough  merely  to 


374  BOSTON 

say  that  the  geographical  relation  of  Boston  to  the 
rest  of  the  country  accounts  for  many  things,  historic 
and  present,  in  its  condition.  It  is  placed  in  a  corner, 
not  on  the  main  line  to  anywhere  in  particular,  unless 
it  be  a  destination  to  be  reached  by  sea.  New  York, 
Philadelphia,  Baltimore,  and  Washington  stand  like 
the  separated  houses  of  a  country  street,  not  far  enough 
apart  to  prevent  the  occupants  of  each  from  holding 
neighborly  relations  with  all  the  others.  '  Boston  is 
over  in  the  next  township,  and  the  people  of  our 
eastern  seaboard  have  not  acquired  that  western  in- 
timacy with  the  sleeping-car  which  encourages  its  use 
as  a  convenience  rather  than  a  necessity.  It  may  be 
that  Boston  owes  to  a  certain  self-sufficiency,  which  has 
grown  out  of  this  partial  separation  from  the  main 
currents  of  national  life,  some  of  its  reputation  for 
aloofness  and  indifference  to  the  broader  interests  of 
the  country.  Such  a  reputation  is  not  gained  without 
cause.  Here  the  cause  seems  not  far  to  seek  in  the 
critical  spirit  keenly  developed  by  local  circumstances. 
The  critical  spirit  is  peculiar  to  the  looker-on.  It 
renders  him  sometimes  a  useful,  sometimes  an  ob- 
structive, seldom  a  popular  member  of  society.  He 
is  suspected  of  holding  notions  of  superiority  which 
frequently  are  quite  foreign  to  him.  It  may  be  that 
he  is  a  critical  spectator  more  because  he  cannot  than 
because  he  would  not  like  to  be  something  else.  He 
has  his  uses  —  perhaps  in  setting  and  maintaining 
standards  to  which  others  pay  an  unconscious  regard. 
He  has  also  his  serious  limitations.     Thev  are  reflected 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE 


375 


—  if  Boston  and  Massachusetts  be  taken  as  represen- 
tative abodes  of  the  critical  spirit  —  in  the  striking 
fact  that  for  all  their  wealth  of  men  of  light  and  lead- 
ing, these  places  have  not,  since  the  time  of  Adamses, 
yielded  a  single  President  to  the  United  States.  In- 
deed, through  all  this  period,  Franklin  Pierce  and 
Chester  A.  Arthur  —  and  they  by  something  like 
accident  —  have  been  the  only  men  of  New  England 
birth  to  occupy  the  White  House. 

The  witty  division  of  Boston  itself  into  "  Boston  " 
and  "  Boston  Proper  "  was  made  some  years  ago.  A 
fuller  definition  of  "  Boston  Proper "  is  found  in  a 
few  words  spoken  by  one  who  knew  it  well,  but 
saw  beyond  its  limits.  The  term  was  used,  said  this 
speaker,  to  distinguish  the  "  core  and  centre  of  in- 
tellectual Boston  from  its  more  or  less  vulgar  and 
outlying  dependencies.  .  .  .  And  truly  in  those  good 
old  days  —  back  some  thirty  or  forty  years  in  the 
past  —  there  was  a  Boston  within  Boston,  cultured, 
moral,  conservative,  and  —  proper.  I  feel  great  ten- 
derness for  this  dead  Boston  proper.  I  was  brought 
up  in  it  —  or,  I  might  more  modestly  say,  on  the  out- 
skirts of  it  —  and  should  like  nothing  better  than  to 
chronicle  its  many  virtues,  of  which  I  am  fully  con- 
scious. It  had  provincial  characteristics,  good  as  well 
as  bad,  and  it  is  to  our  loss  that  we  have  fallen  away 
from  some  of  its  standards  of  living.  Nevertheless, 
there  was  in  it  a  certain  narrowness  of  perception, 
which  could  not  easily  admit  the  merit  of  contem- 
porary character  which   influenced   the  world   outside 


376  BOSTON 

its  own  very  respectable  boundaries.  It  was  apt  to 
take  its  own  notions  of  what  was  proper  as  a  criterion 
for  the  rest  of  mankind;  it  would  in  all  honesty  say 
its  Sunday  prayer  '  for  all  sorts  and  conditions  of 
men/  but  found  some  difficulty  in  a  week-day  effort 
to  understand  them   and  to  do  them  justice." 

Especially  in  the  last  two  of  these  sentences  quoted 
from  the  Proceedings  of  the  Massachusetts  Historical 
Society,  November,  1884,  there  is  abundant  food  for 
contemporary  thought.  What  was  true  of  Boston 
fifty  and  sixty  years  ago  has  not  grown  entirely  false. 
There  are  still  the  "typical  Bostonians"  —  as  the  term 
is  questionably  used — who  confuse  their  local  crite- 
rions  with  those  of  the  world  at  large.  They  are  the 
persons  who  maintain  toward  the  stranger  the  attitude 
which  imparts  to  him  a  sense  of  being  under  suspicion, 
until  he  explains  himself  or  is  adequately  explained. 
When,  with  due  caution,  the  explanation  is  accepted, 
the  stranger  also  may  meet  with  an  acceptance  so 
hearty  that  he  will  forget  his  period  of  suspense. 
This,  perhaps,  is  merely  the  characteristic  to  be  ex- 
pected in  the  American  city  which  bears  the  strongest 
outward  resemblance  to  a  city  of  the  British  mother 
island.  The  social  attribute  of  caution  and  the  aloof- 
ness  from  national  life  already  noted  are  but  synTEols 
of  a  common  and  continuing  spirit  —  the  spirit  of 
"  Boston  Proper." 

The  more  distinctive  attributes  of  Boston,  likable 
and  unlovely,  blend  in  the  minds  of  men  to  create  the 
idea  for  which  the  name  of  Boston  stands.     The  idea 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE     377 

is  such  that  the  definition  of  Boston  as  a  state  of  mind 
rather  than  a  city  readily  takes  the  fancy.  For  greater 
accuracy,  let  us  say  that  the  present  community  is  a 
city  —  very  much  a  city  —  with  a  state  of  mind  very 
much  its  own.  The  outward  and  visible  sign  of  it  is 
in  the  streets,  the  parks,  the  wharves,  the  institutions, 
occupied  and  controlled  by  citizens  in  whom,  to  an 
uncommon  degree,  dwells  a  spirit  which  may  be  called 
characteristic,  a  spirit  which  makes  Boston  Boston,  and 
not  a  chance  assemblage  of  houses  and  persons. 

How,  then,  does  the  Boston  state  of  mind  express 
itself  in  the  twentieth-century  city  ?  Surely,  for  one 
thing,  in  a  keen  sense  of  civic  responsibility,  which 
has  brought  many  good  things  to  pass,  and  promises 
well  for  the  future.  The  tangible  fruits  of  this  spirit 
are  to  be  sought  rather  in  public  works  than  in  private 
undertakings.  We  find  a  system  of  parks  controlled 
by  state  and  city,  providing  thousands  of  acres  of  wood- 
land, hill,  river-bank  and  stream,  sea  beaches  and  play- 
grounds, within  and  just  beyond  the  city  Hmits.  We 
find  the  passenger  service  of  railroads  entering  the  city 
from  north  and  south  brought  together  in  two  great 
stations,  one  of  them  the  largest  terminal  in  the  world. 
An  elaborate  system  of  street  transit,  combining  surface, 
elevated,  and  subway  methods,  now  extending  by  means 
of  a  tunnel  under  the  harbor  itself,  has  been  developed 
by  private  and  municipal  enterprise,  and  ratified  at  suc- 
cessive steps  by  the  popular  vote.  As  in  other  cities, 
the  rapid  growth  of  electric  power  has  had  its  effect  in 
uniting  the  interests  of  the  city  with  those  of  all  the 


378  BOSTON 

surrounding  country.  But  the  exceptional  good  for- 
tune of  Boston  has  lain  in  the  nearness  of  suburbs  of 
uncommon  attractiveness,  now  rendered  more  than  ever 
habitable  by  those  who  have  their  daily  work  to  do  on 
the  crowded  promontory  of  old  Boston.  In  all  these 
developments  the  vision  of  the  men  of  action  has  been 
fixed  on  the  future  with  a  sense  of  responsibility  as 
true  as  that  of  Horace  Mann  when  he  chose  posterity 
for  his  client.  Cause  and  effect  are  easily  confused  in 
the  figures  of  population.  It  is  the  fact,  however,  that 
although  Boston  with  its  little  more  than  half  a  million 
inhabitants  stands  in  the  census  of  1900  as  the  fifth 
city  in  the  country,  the  closely  contiguous  towns  and 
cities  included  in  what  is  called  Greater  Boston  make 
it  the  centre  of  a  population  numbering  well  above  a 
million.  In  a  radius  of  fifty  miles  from  this  centre 
there  is  a  population  so  near  to  three  millions  that  the 
territory  about  the  city  of  New  York  is  in  America 
the  only  corresponding  area  more  densely  populated. 

Like  all  American  cities,  Boston  has  seen  the  char- 
acter of  its  population  undergo  extraordinary  changes. 
A  careful  student  of  the  subject,  Mr.  Frederick  A. 
Bushee,  pointed  out,  as  the  nineteenth  century  was 
ending,  just  what  had  happened  since  1 845.  Of  the  four 
elements  in  the  population  at  that  time,  "  those  born 
in  other  parts  of  the  United  States,"  he  said,  "  ranked 
first,  those  born  in  Boston  of  American  parentage 
second,  the  foreign  born  come  next,  and,  the  children 
of  foreigners  last."  The  transformation  that  had  come 
in    1899  ^^^    ^^^^    summarized:  "The  foreign  born 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE     381 

rank  first,  the  children  of  foreigners  second,  persons 
born  in  other  parts  of  the  United  States  come  next, 
and  the  old  Bostonians  are  last."  The  great  change 
began  with  the  Irish  invasion  immediately  following 
the  Irish  famine  of  1846—7.  The  city  which  made  so 
prompt  and  generous  a  gift  as  that  of  Boston  to  the 
sufferers,  and  placed  the  management  of  it  in  hands 
so  efficient  as  those  of  Captain  Robert  Ben  net 
Forbes,  commanding  the  "Jamestown"  expedition, 
must  have  seemed  a  source  of  all  cohifort.  Accord- 
ingly, the  Irish  hastened  to  its  shores.  Coming  first 
as  laborers,  with  sisters  and  sweethearts  in  domestic 
service,  the  men  soon  showed  their  native  aptitude 
for  politics.  It  is  now  more  than  twenty  years  since 
the  first  of  the  two  Boston  mayors  of  Irish  birth 
entered  upon  his  four  years  in  office.  The  city 
government,  judged  by  the  names  of  aldermen  and 
council,  has  long  been  virtually  an  Irish  organization ; 
and  "  the  Boston  Religion,"  if  the  numerical  test  be 
applied  to  it,  is  no  longer  Protestant.  Indeed,  the 
Irish  have  grown  to  be  the  largest  single  element  in 
the  population,  outnumbering  even  the  Americans  born 
in  all  parts  of  the  United  States.  Another  important 
English-speaking,  semi-foreign  element  is  that  of  the 
British-Americans  who  have  naturally  come  in  the 
greatest  numbers  to  the  large  city  lying  nearest 
the  Canadian  border.  For  other  races,  Boston  makes 
no  attempt  to  vie  with  New  York  and  Chicago  as  a 
Pentecostal  gathering  place.  Yet  the  recent  rapid 
immigration  of  Russian  and  Polish  Jews,  Italians  and 


382  BOSTON 

representatives  of  many  other  races,  confronts  the  city 
with  the  puzzHng  problems  common  to  all  the  Ameri- 
can centres  of  population. 

To  cope  with  these  new  conditions  the  same  efforts 
are  making  in  Boston  as  elsewhere  in  America.  The 
attempt  to  amalgamate  the  diverse  elements  into  a 
common  citizenship  goes  forward  through  hundreds 
of  agencies,  —  the  pubHc  schools,  the  social  settlements, 
the  organization  of  charities,  secular  and  religious,  de- 
signed to  meet  every  conceivable  need  of  the  unfortu- 
nate, but  in  such  a  way  as  to  create  citizens  instead 
of  paupers.  The  municipality  itself  assumes  its  share 
in  the  great  undertaking  by  such  means,  beyond  the 
pubHc  schools,  as  the  highly  developed  system  of 
public  baths,  where  the  individual,  observing  simple 
rules  for  the  good  of  all,  may  learn  the  alphabet  of 
responsibility  and  its  good  results. 

At  every  turn  this  principle  of  responsibility  presents 
itself.  Yet  the  best  of  qualities  have  their  grave  de- 
fects, and  in  Boston  it  is  no  rare  phenomenon  to  see 
the  sense  of  responsibility  so  overplied  as  to  become 
either  futile  or  morbid.  The  tendency  has  its  pleasing 
manifestation  in  the  fulfilled  desire  of  men  and  women 
of  every  common  interest  to  meet  for  weekly  or 
monthly  dinners  followed  by  the  talking  of  shop. 
The  same  tendency  is  expressed  less  happily  in  the 
needless  multiplication  of  agencies  for  doing  nearly 
the  same  thing.  Not  only  in  the  field  of  benevolence 
and  reform  may  this  be  seen,  but  in  the  more  practical 
domain    of  trade    and    commerce,   where   boards   and 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE     385 

chambers  and  associations  proceed  with  scattered  shots 
and  consequently  impaired  authority.  The  root  of  the 
matter  lies  in  a  widespread  impulse  amongst  individ- 
uals to  "  do  something  about  it,"  which  frequently 
means  no  more  than  to  "  talk  it  over." 

To  the  critical  attitude  and  the  sense  of  responsi- 
bility, as  characteristics  of  Boston,  must  finally  be  added 
that  "good  principle  of  rebellion"  which  we  have 
found  Emerson  noting  in  the  people  of  the  place 
"from  the  planting  until  now."  Here  we  have  seen 
rebellion  against  many  accepted  things,  —  royal  author- 
ity, the  national  policy  of  18 12,  the  established  religion 
of  New  England,  and  the  constitutional  order  of  sla- 
very. The  rebels  have  never  represented  the  whole 
community,  nor  always  those  elements  of  it  which 
seemed  surest  to  prevail.  They  are  still  to  be  seen 
and  heard.  The  Sunday  orators  on  Boston  Common 
vent  their  grievances  against  an  uaequal  world,  gather 
their  audiences  under  the  very  windows  of  the  clubs 
and  dwelling-houses  which  symbolize  the  inequalities 
—  and  are  in  no  wise  let  or  hindered.  Rebelling 
against  the  accepted  relations  between  the  spiritual  and 
the  material  in  a  world  compacted  of  both,  another 
element  of  the  community  establishes  and  maintains  in 
Boston  the  "  Mother  Church  "  of  "  Christian  Science." 
In  quite  another  sphere  of  thought  and  condition  the 
Anti-imperialists,  true  descendants  of  the  good  Boston 
Federalists  who  opposed  the  JefFersonian  policy  of 
aggression  and  expansion,  rebel  against  the  prevailing 
I  theories  of  government. 


THE    MODERN    INHERITANCE     387 

There  is,  moreover,  a  constant  rebellion  in  Boston 
against  the  accepted  American  belief  that  life  consists 
largely  in  the  abundance  of  possessions.  The  anxious 
getting  and  the  lavish  spending  of  money  cannot  be 
added  to  the  catalogue  of  local  qualities.  In  spite 
of  the  glittering  exceptions  which  a  few  names  bring  to 
mind,  there  was  truth  at  the  bottom  of  the  observation 
recently  made  and  published  by  an  "  English  New 
Yorker."  "  On  the  whole,"  he  said,  "  I  should  sum 
up  my  impressions  of  Boston  by  saying  that  compared 
with  the  other  leading  American  cities,  she  stands  much 
less  in  need  of  the  reminder  that  the  life  is  more  than 
meat  and  the  body  than  raiment."  It  may  be  added 
truly  to  these  words  that  the  things  of  the  mind  and 
spirit  —  books,  pictures,  music,  practical  religion,  the 
love  of  nature  and  the  healthy  sports  which  bring 
body  and  spirit  together  —  all  these  are  characteristic 
interests  of  the  place.  And  they  are  characteristic  just 
because  they  are  so  vitally  interesting  to  so  large  a 
portion  of  the  population  of  Boston. 

It  would  be  utterly  unprofitable  to  make  compari- 
sons in  points  like  these  between  Boston  and  other 
places.  Comparisons  and  theories  are  less  important 
than  facts.  The  city  as  it  stands  to-day  is  in  many 
respects  an  outgrowth,  a  reconstruction,  of  the  very 
facts  which  the  preceding  chapters  have  related.  The 
community  is  but  a  larger  individual  in  having  many 
of  its  characteristics  determined  by  the  generations 
that  have  gone  before.  The  descendant  may  not 
have  entire  freedom  to  pick  and  choose  between  the 


388 


BOSTON 


ancestor  who  rose  to  the  bench  and  that  other  who 
should  have  climbed  the  gallows.  But  the  people  of 
Boston  are  rich  in  the  inheritances  that  are  good  to 
cultivate  and  to  transmit.  What  shall  be  winnowed 
out  of  them  all  for  posterity,  none  may  say.  There 
is  yet  no  reason  to  fear  a  discontinuance  of  that  state 
of  mind  which  is  informed  pecuHarly  with  the  fruitful 
qualities  of  responsibility  and  rebellion. 


INDEX 


Academy,  French,  325. 
Academy  of  Music,  Boston,  343. 
"Act  to  Prevent  Stage  Plays,  An,"  133. 
Adams,  Charles  Francis,  187,  244,  289. 
Adams,  John,  14,  88,  89,  96, 102, 125,  239, 

375- 
Adams,  Mrs.  John,  122. 
Adams,  John  Quincy,  300,  319,  375. 
Adams,  Samuel,  90,  98, 106-107, 125, 126, 

134,  135,  144,  146,  148,  372. 
Adams  Schoolhouse,  330. 
"  Adventures,"  176. 
Advertiser^  Boston  Daily,  183,  360. 
Agassiz,  Louis,  244,  332. 
Agassiz   Museum,   Harvard  University, 

363- 

Alcott,  Amos  Bronson,  227,  229,  278. 

Allston,  Washington,  345. 

Ambrose,  ship,  6. 

Amherst  College,  363. 

Amory,  Thomas  Coffin,  134. 

Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery  Com- 
pany, 25. 

Andover  Seminary,  200,  220. 

AndreviT,  John  Albion,  246,  284,  288-295, 

337- 
Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  37,  55-58,  69,  80. 
Annexations,  363. 
Anthology  Club,  139,  140,  224. 
Anti-Man-Hunting  League,  280. 
Antinomian  Controversy,  14-24. 
Antioch  College,  320.    . 
Antislavery  Fair,  266. 
Antislavery  movement.    -5*^1?  The  SLAVE 

AND  THE  Union. 
Antislavery  Standard,  240,  266,  271. 
Appleton,  Thomas  Gold,  237. 
Arbella,  ship,  6. 
Arthur,  Chester  Alan,  375. 
Assistants,  Court  of,  10,  11-12,  25,  28,  32. 
Atahualpa,  ship,  178. 
Athenaeum.     See  Boston  A. 


Atlantic  Club,  243, 

Atlantic  Motithly,  239-243,  246. 

Attoo,  Hawaiian  chief,  164,  167. 

Austin,  Benjamin,  147. 

Austin,  Charles,  147. 

Austin,  James  Trecothick,  271. 

Back  Bay,  335,  350-365,  371. 

Bacon,  Leonard,  220. 

Bainbridge,  William,  149,  150. 

Balch,  hatter,  130. 

Baldwin,  Loammi,  152. 

Bancroft,  George,  236,  248. 

Barings,  banking-house,  330,  331. 

Barnum,  Phineas  Taylor,  343. 

Bates,  Joshua,  330-333. 

Beacon  Hill,  9,  31,  47,  152,  153,  274,  320, 

335- 

Beacon  monument,  152. 

Beecher,  Edward,  210. 

Beecher,  Lyman,  203-205,  210. 

Belcher,  Jonathan,  69,  74. 

Bellomont,  Earl  of,  Richard  Coote,  69. 

Belsham,  Thomas,  200. 

Bennett  ("  Boston  in  1740"),  79. 

Bernard,  Sir  Francis,  88,  loi. 

Biglow  Papers,  272. 

Billerica,  Mass.,  iii, 

Blackstone,  William,  9,  33. 

Blockade  of  Boston,  ivy. 

"  Body  of  Liberties,"  13,  44. 

Booth,  Edwin,  340. 

Boston :    first  step  toward   independent 
control,  3  ;  named,  10  ;  early  interest 
in  education,  35 ;   changes  in  outline 
and  area,  38,  152,  350-364;  local  and 
national  history,  87,  112,  251,  287-288 
siege,  113-120;    evacuation   of,  120 
new  element  of  leadership  in,   124 
Sunday     observance,     74,     130-133 
drama   in,   133-135,   339-340;    social 
observances,  136 ;    simplicity  of  life, 


389 


390 


INDEX 


137;  academic  influence,  137;  sense 
of  responsibility,  142,  377,  382;  cau- 
tion, 143,  376 ;  Federalism  in,  145- 
150;  city  government  adopted,  155; 
maritime  interests,  158 ;  missionary 
enterprise,  188 ;  respectability,  230 ; 
conservative  and  radical,  256-257; 
women  reformers,  265 ;  loyalty  to 
Union,  288;  reading  habit,  326; 
music  in,  340,  343-345  ;  painting  and 
sculpture  in,  345-346;  geographical 
position,  374;  critical  spirit,  374; 
"Boston  Proper"  and,  375;  popula- 
tion, 378;    principle  of  rebellion  in, 

385,  387. 

Boston  Academy  of  Music,  343 ;  Athe- 
naeum, 139,  140,  224,  303,  315,  326, 
346;  Common,  33,  41,78,  79,  III,  120, 
131.  307.  309-310,  351,  359,  369.  38s; 
Custom-house,  248;  Female  Anti- 
slavery  Society,  263 ;  Latin  School, 
35 ;  Library,  326 ;  Massacre,  92,  96 ; 
Museum,  309,  340 ;  Museum  of  Fine 
Arts,  232,  340,  346 ;  Music  Hall,  217, 
285,  343  ;  Musical  Fund  Society,  343  ; 
Public  Library,  232,  304,  326-335 ; 
Society  of  Natural  History,  335,  363 ; 
Symphony  Orchestra,  344 ;  Tea  Party, 
98,  105-107,  153  ;  Water-Power  Com- 
pany, 353.  356,  360. 

Boston  and  Roxbury  Mill  Corporation, 
352-353.  360. 

"  Boston  Religion,  The,"  190-221. 

Boston  Unitarianism,  209. 

Boston,  England,  10. 

"  Bostonnais,"  48. 

Bowditch,  Henry  Ingersoll,  267,  273,  276, 
279-280. 

Bowdoin,  James,  Jr.,  121. 

Bowdoin  College,  236. 

Boylston,  Zabdiel,  141. 

Bradstreet,  Simon,  6. 

Brattle,  Thomas,  70. 

Breck,  Samuel,  122,  131. 

Bridgman,  Laura  Dewey,  323. 

Brighton,  Mass.,  363. 

Britannia,  ship,  183-184. 

Bromfield,  John,  140. 

Brook  Farm,  22j~2,2.g. 

Brooks,  Phillips,  7,  346-349. 


Brooks,  Preston  Smith,  286-287. 
Brown,  Charles  Brockden,  223. 
Brown,  John,  284-285. 
Brown  University,  318,  320. 
Browne,  Albert  Gallatin,  Jr.,  289, 
Buckminster,  Joseph  Stevens,  301. 
Bulfinch,  Charles,  135,  138,  152,  163,  323, 
Bunker  Hill,  112,  117,  280,  306. 
Bunker  Hill  Monument,  306-308  ;  Asso- 
ciation, 308. 
Burgoyne,  John,  112, 117, 
Burke,  Edmund,  70,  217. 
Burnet,  William,  69. 
Burns,  Anthony,  275,  277-280. 
Burr,  Aaron,  148. 
Burroughs,  George,  62. 
Bushee,  Frederick  A.,  378. 
Bute,  Earl  of,  99. 
Byles,  Mather,  72-73,  352. 

Cadets,  coips  of,  280. 

Calef,  Robert,  62. 

Cambridge,  England,  3. 

Cambridge,  Mass.,  36,  47,  72,  113,  118, 

141,  152,  236-237,  247. 
Cape  Breton,  84. 
Cape  Hancock,  167. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  228. 
Castle  Island,  31,  57,  94. 
Catch-me-if-you-can,  ship,  177. 
Centinel,  Columbian,  131. 
Chadwick,  John  White,  218. 
Chancery,  Court  of,  53. 
Channing,  William  EUery,  147,  201,  202, 

206,  208,  213,  219,  260,  268-270. 
Chapman,  Maria  Weston,  265-269. 
Charles  I,  7,  26,  27. 
Charles  H,  41,  51-53. 
Charles  River,  9-10,  34. 
Charles  Street  Mall,  77. 
Charlestown,  Mass.,  9,  108,  112-113,  117, 

152,  173,  307,  363. 
Cheever,  Ezekiel,  66. 
Chelsea,  Mass.,  115. 
Chesapeake,  ship,  150. 
Chicago,  111.,  370. 
Chicago,  Burlington  &  Quincy  Railroad, 

184. 
Child,  Lydia  Maria,  265-266. 
Choate,  Rufus,  273,  305-306. 


INDEX 


391 


"  Christian  Science,"  385. 
Church,  Benjamin,  49. 
Church,  Brattle  Street,  70,  301. 

Christ,  80. 

Cockerel,  72. 

First,  6,  70. 

First,  West  Roxbury,  215. 

Hanover  Street,  210. 

Hollis  Street,  70,  72. 

Manifesto,  70. 

New  Brick,  70-71. 

New  North,  70-72. 

New  South,  70,  74. 

Old  South,  70,  74,  93-94,  106,  115, 

126,  140,  220,  366. 
Park  Street,  200,  210,  269,  340,  345, 

370- 

Revenge,  71. 

Second,  70. 

Shepard  Memorial,  Cambridge,  72. 

Trinity,  349. 

West,  190. 

City  Hall,  330. 

Clarke,  James  Freeman,  216. 

Clinton,  Sir  Henry,  117. 

Cochituate,  Lake,  308. 

Coddington,  WiUiam,  6. 

Codman,  William  C,  179. 

Colonial  Boston,  26-53. 

Colonization  Society,  257. 

Columbia,  ship,  163-168. 

Columbia  River,  167. 

Columbus  Avenue,  360. 

Commerce,  Trade  and.     See  THE  HUB 

AND  THE  Wheel. 
Committee  of  Correspondence,  92,  102- 

103,  106,  108. 
Common.     See  Boston  C. 
Commonw^ealth  Avenue,  351,  358,  360. 
Concert  Hall,  117,  122. 
Connecticut,  52. 
Constitution,  Federal,  126. 
Constitution,  frigate,  149,  150,  158. 
Constitution  Wharf,  150. 
Constitutional  Gazette,  116. 
Continental  Congress,  103,  iii,  116. 
Cook,  James,  163. 
Cooper,  James  Fenimore,  223. 
Coote,  Richard,  Earl  of  Bellomont,  69. 
Copley,  John  Singleton,  345. 


Copley  Square,  332. 

Copp's  Hill,  38,  153. 

Cornhill,  274. 

Cornwallis,  surrender  of,  122. 

Cotton,  John,  7,  13,  17,  58. 

Court  House,  274,  277-279. 

"Covenant      of     Grace,"      17-19;       of 

"  Works,"  18. 
Cradock,  Mathew,  27,  28. 
Craft,  William  and  Ellen,  276. 
Cranch,  Christopher  Pearse,  228. 

Cromyyell.  Oliver.  qx._SQ.  iic;^ 

Cunard,  Samuel,  181-182. 
Cunard  Company,  187. 
Curlew,  brig,  179. 
Curtis,  Benjamin  Robbins,  273. 
Curtis,  George  William,  228. 
Gushing,  John  P.,  171. 
Cushman,  Charlotte,  340. 
Custom-house,  248. 

Dalrymple,  William,  93,  94, 

Dana,  Charles  Anderson,  228. 

Dana,  Richard  Henry,  Jr.,  244,  273,  277, 

278. 
Dartmouth,  tea-ship,  107. 
Davy,  Sir  Humphry,  324. 
Dealings  with  the  Dead,  71,  84. 
Declaration  of  Independence,  The,  iii, 

121. 
Dedham,  Mass.,  108,  205,  318. 
Dexter,  Timothy,  172. 
^ial,  227,  228. 

Divine  and  Moral  Songs,  195. 
Dorchester,  Mass.,  108,  121,  153,  363. 
Dorchester  Heights,  118. 
Douglass,  Frederick,  285. 
Dowse,  Thomas,  303. 
Drama,  133-135.  339-340- 
Dred  Scott  decision,  287. 
Drummond,  Henry,  317. 
Dryden,  John,  17. 
Dudley,  Joseph,  54-55,  69. 
Dudley,  Thomas,  32-33,  54. 
Dunton,  bookseller,  47,  63. 
D wight,  John  Sullivan,  343. 
Dyer,  Mary,  41, 

East  Boston  (Noddle's  Island),  141,  150 
183,  363. 


9-% 


39' 


INDEX 


East  India  Company,  105. 

Elgin,  Lord,  310. 

Eliot,  John,  49. 

Ellis,  George  Edward,  49,  201,  203,  207. 

Embargo  of  1807,  146,  148-150,  177. 

Emerald,  packet,  181. 

Emerson,  Ralph  Waldo,  2,  14,  39,  156, 

187,  214,  215,  226,  229,  233,  239,  241, 

244,  246.  247,  385. 
Etnpress  o/the  Seas,  ship,  160. 
Endicott,  John,  8,  41,  44. 
Everett,    Edward,     168,    172,    236,    259, 

267,  286,  288,  298,  301-307,  314,  332, 

346. 
Examiner  Club,  244. 

Faneuil  Hall,  83,  84,  93,  117,  133,  134, 

137,  260,  266,  270,  277. 
Faneuil,  Peter,  83. 
Farragut,  David  Glasgow,  172. 
Favorite,  brig,  173. 
Federal  St.  Theatre,  135. 
Federalist,  225. 

Federalist  party,  145-150,  299,  385. 
Felton,  Cornelius  Conway,  332. 
Female  Antislavery  Society,  Boston,  263. 
Fenway,  138. 

Fields,  James  Thomas,  242-244. 
Fifty-fourth  Mass.  Regiment,  291-296. 
Figures  of  the  Past,  208. 
Fillmore,  Millard,  302,  310, 
Fire,  Water  and,  350-371. 
Fiske,  John,  92,  iii.  « 

Forbes,  John   Murray,    177,   272,    290- 

291. 
Forbes,  Robert  Bennet,  171,  172,  381. 
Fort  Hill,  38,  250. 
Fort  Independence,  57. 
Fort  W^agner,  295. 
Foster,  John,  47. 

Foundation  and  Early  Years,  1-25. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  77,  loi,  318. 
Franklin,  Mass.,  318. 
Freeman,  James,  194-196. 
Freeport,  Maine,  132. 
French  Revolution,  144-145,  193. 
Frog-pond,  309. 
From    Books     atid    Papers    of    Russell 

Sturgis,  231. 

From  Town  to  City,  123-155. 


Froth ingham,  Nathaniel  Langdon,  201, 

216. 
Frothingham,  Octavius  Brooks,  209,  226, 

259- 
Fugitive  Slave  Law,  272-273. 

Gage,  Thomas,  68,  93,  98,  loi,  108,  113- 

114,  116,  120. 
Gannett,  Ezra  Stiles,  258,  360. 
Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  250-274,  295- 

296. 
Gazette,  Salem,  179. 
General  Court,  13,  20,  25,  28,  31,  52-53, 

134.  153.  158.  299,  318,  352. 
Gilman,  Arthur,  357. 
Glover,  Goody,  42. 
Goddard,  William  W.,  360. 
Godwin,  Parke,  228. 

Goffe,  regicide,  52. 

Goss  and  Munson,  contractors,  359. 

Granary  Building,  158. 

Granary  Burying  Ground,  Old,  88. 

Gray,  Robert,  164-167. 

Gray,  William,  137. 

Great  Seal  of  New  England,  56. 

Great  Western,  steamship,  181. 

Greeley,  Horace,  228. 

Greenough,  Horatio,  308,  345. 

Griffin's  (Liverpool)  Wharf,  107. 

Guerriere,  ship,  150. 

Hale,  Edward  Everett,  137,  247. 

Hale,  Nathan,  234. 

Halifax,  120,  181,  182. 

Hallowell,  Benjamin,  100. 

Hamilton,  Alexander,  148. 

Hancock,  John,  102,  122,  124-131,  133- 

135,  144,  146,  164. 
Hancock  House,  336. 

Handel  and   Haydn   Society,  309,  340, 

343- 
Harbinger,  228. 
Harper,  actor,  134. 
Harrison,  Peter,  80. 
Hartford  Convention,  150. 
Harvard,  John,  47. 
Harvard  College,  36,  137,  210,  224,  299, 

302,  309. 
Harvard  Hall,  88. 
Harvard  Musical  Association,  343. 


INDEX 


393 


Hastings,  Etheridge  and  Bliss's  book- 
store, 331. 

Hawthorne,  Nathaniel,  10,  20,  33,  44, 
123,  236,  242,  248. 

Heath,  William,  122. 

Hedge,  Frederic  Henry,  246,  321. 

Herbert,  George,  4. 

Herndon,  William  Henry,  286. 

Higginson,  Henry  Lee,  292,  295. 

Higginson,  Thomas  Wentworth,  228,  247, 
277-278. 

Hill,  Hamilton  Andrews,  158,  182,  184. 

Hinsdale,  Burke  Aaron,  320. 

History  of  Massachicsetts  Bay,  Hutchin- 
son, 98. 

History  of  New  Eijgland,  Winthrop's 
Journal,  7. 

HoUis,  Thomas,  199. 

Hollis  Professorship,  196,  200. 

Holmes,  Oliver  Wendell,  208,  233,  237- 
239,  240,  243,  244,  246,  247,  300,  313, 
332,  363. 

Hosmer,  James  Kendall,  91. 

Howe,  Samuel  Gridley,  277,  320-323. 

Howe,  Julia  Ward,  265. 

Howe,  Sir  William,  117,  118-120. 

"  Howe's  Masquerade,"  123. 

Howells,  William  Dean,  225. 

Hub  and  the  Wheel,  The,  156-189. 

Huguenot  families,  83. 

Hull,  Isaac,  150. 
•Hull,  John,  51,  65. 

Hunt,  William  Morris,  345. 

Huntington  Avenue,  360. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  14-23. 

Hutchinson,  Thomas,  51,  67,  69,  88-90, 
93-94,  98,  99-101,  106-107. 

Hutchinson,  William,  17,  23. 

Ice  trade,  173-176. 
Ichabod,  273. 
Independence,  ship,  149. 
Irish  element,  381. 
Irving,  Washington,  223,  235. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  179. 

Jackson,  Charles  Thomas,  324-326. 

James  11,55,  57.  60. 

James,  Henry,  Sr.,  246. 

Jamestown  expedition,  381. 


Java,  ship,  150. 
Jenner,  Edward,  141. 
Jewel,  ship,  6. 

Johnson,  Lady  Arbella,  6,  10. 
Johnson,  Isaac,  6,  10. 
Johnson,  Edward,  37-38. 
Johnson,  Oliver,  253,  266. 
Jonson,  Ben,  230. 

Kansas-Nebraska  Bill,  276,  283* 

Keayne,  Robert,  25. 

Kemble,  Captain,  44. 

Kidd,  William,  69. 

King  Philip's  War,  49-50. 

King's   Chapel    ("Stone   Chapel"),  71, 

80-83,  139,  194.  343- 
Kingfisher,  frigate,  55. 
Knox,  Henry,  163. 

Lafayette,   Marquis    de,    131,   250,  306, 

307,  329,  330- 
"  Latest  Form  of  Infidelity,"  215. 
Latin  School,  35. 
Laud,  Archbishop,  7,  27,  28. 
Lawrence,  Abbott,  260. 
Lawrence,  Amos  Adams,  283, 
Lawrence,  T.  Bigelow,  360. 
Lawrence,  WiUiam,  283. 
Leddra,  William,  41. 
Lee,  Charles,  143. 
Leslie,  Charles  Robert,  233. 
Letters  from    the  Eastern    States,  136, 

143- 
Letters  to  Dr.  Chatifiitig,  202. 
Letters  to  Unitarians,  202. 
Leverett  Street  jail,  264. 
Lewis  and  Clark  Expedition,  168. 
Lexington,  Mass.,  112. 
Liberator,  252-254,  260,  267,  272,  274. 
Liberty  Bell,  266-267. 
"  Liberty  Tea,"  105. 
Liberty  Tree,  99,  115. 
Library,  Boston,  326. 
Library,  Boston  Public,  232, 304,  326-335. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  286,  288,  290,  302. 
Lincoln,  Earl  of,  6. 
Lincolnshire,  10,  17. 
Lind,  Jenny,  343. 
Lindsey,  Theophilus,  200. 
"  Literary  Centre,"  The,  222-249. 


394 


INDEX 


Liverpool  Wharf,  107. 

Lodge,  Henry  Cabot,  35,  124,  125. 

Longfellow,     Henry    Wadsworth,    232, 

233,  236-237,  240,  242,  248. 
Loring,  Edward  Greely,  279. 
Louis  XVI,  145. 
Louisburg,  84,  85. 
Lovejoy,  Elijah  Parish,  270-271. 
Lovell,  John,  83. 
Lowell,  Francis  Cabot,  314. 
Lowell,  James  Russell,  228,  233,  239-240, 

241,  244,  247,  267,  271,  272,  298,  314. 
Lowell,  John,  200. 
Lowell,  Judge  John,  316. 
Lowell,  John,  Jr.,  314-317. 
Lowell,  John  Amory,  316. 
Lov/ell,  Mass.,  151. 
Lowell  Institute,  313-317. 
Lyman,  Theodore,  178. 
Lyman,  Theodore,  Jr.,  260,  263. 

Macaulay,  Thomas  Babington,  303. 

Macbeth,  133. 

Madison,  James,  149. 

Maine,  59,  132. 

Manhattan,  23. 

Mann,  Horace,  317-320,  378. 

Marlboro  Chapel,  266. 

Martinique,  173. 

Massachusetts  Bay  Company,  3,  6,  8,  27, 

52-53- 
Massachusetts    General    Hospital,   239, 

323-325. 

Historical  Society,  138, 303, 364,  376. 

Institute   of  Technology,   335-338, 

363- 
Massacre,  Boston,  92,  96. 
Mather,  Cotton,  40,  42,   49,  61-65,  I4i> 

326,  350,  364. 
Mather,  Increase,  58-61,  65,  326. 
Mather,  Samuel,  64. 

May,  Samuel  Joseph,  255,  257-258,  268. 
Mayhew,  Jonathan,  190. 
McClellan,  George  Brinton,  289. 
Men  and  Monuments,  297-349. 
Mercantile  Library  Association,  337. 
Merrymount,  10. 
Mexican,  brig,  179. 
Michigan  Central  Railroad,  184. 
Middlesex  Canal,  151. 


Mill-Dam  (Western  Avenue),  352,  358. 

Mill  Pond,  152, 153. 

Milton,  John,  19. 

Milton,  Mass.,  108. 

Minute  Men,  iii. 

Missions,  foreign,  188. 

Modern  Inheritance,  The,  372-388. 

Monthly  Anthology ,  139. 

Morse,  Jedidiah,  199,  200, 

Morse,  John  Torrey,  Jr.,  238. 

Morse,  Samuel  Finley  Breese,  324. 

Morton,  Thomas,  lo-ii,  26. 

Morton,  William  Thomas  Green,  323- 

326. 
Motley,  John  Lothrop,  10,  235,  236,  239, 

244,  300,  301. 
Mount  Vernon,  302. 
Mount  Wollaston,  10. 
Munson,  Goss  and,  contractors,  359. 
Museum,  Boston,  309,  340. 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts,  232,  340,  346. 
Music,  340,  343-345- 
Music  Hall,  217,  285,  343. 
Musical  Fund  Society,  343. 

Nahant,  Mass.,  236-237. 

Narragansett  Bay,  33. 

Natick,  Mass.,  49. 

Navigation  Act,  51. 

Needham,  Mass.,  359. 

New  England  Antislavery  Society,  253. 

New   England   Conservatory  of  Music, 

344. 
New    England    Emigrant   Aid   Society, 

283. 
New  England  Loyal  Publication  Society, 

291. 
New  Efiglafid  Magazine,  241. 
"  New  Exhibition  Room,"  133. 
New  Hazard,  ship,  177. 
Noddle's  Island,  141,  150. 
North  American  Review,  139,  224,  301. 
North  End,  41. 
North  Station,  153. 
Norton,  Andrews,  214. 
Norton,  Charles  Eliot,  247,  291. 
Nova  Scotia,  59. 

"  Old  Corner  Bookstore,"  17,  242,  317. 
Old  State  House,  145,  264,  279. 


INDEX 


395 


Oliver,  Andrew,  94,  99,  102,  115. 

Otis,  Harrison  Gray,  134,  137,  147,  155, 

260,  351. 
Otis,  James,  88-90,  94,  98. 
Oxenbridge,  John,  47. 

Paine,  Robert  Treat,  96. 

Painting  and  sculpture,  345-346. 

Panda,  schooner,  179. 

Panoplist,  200. 

Papanti,  237. 

Tarkman,  Francis,  236. 

Parker  House,  243,  244. 

Parker,  Theodore,  214,  215,  217,  226,  233, 

276,  277,  285,  286. 
Peace  Jubilee  (1815),  343,  345. 
Peirce,  Benjamin,  332. 
Pemberton  Hill,  153. 
Pen  Portraits,  290. 
Pennsylvania  Freeman,  240. 
Pepperell,  Sir  William,  84, 
Pequot  War,  49. 
Percy,  Lord,  108,  112, 
Perkins,  James,  140. 
Perkins,  Thomas  Handasyd,  273, 322, 351. 
Perkins,  Messrs.,  171,  172. 
"  Perkins  Institution  and  Massachusetts 

School  for  the  Blind,"  320-323. 
Philip  the  Second,  236. 
Phillips,  John,  155. 
Phillips,  Wendell,  265-266,  '2.'j<y-2'j'2,  277, 

285. 
Phillips,  Sampson  &  Co.,  241. 
Phips,  Lady,  61. 
Phips,  Sir  William,  59-62,  68. 
Pierce,  Franklin,  375. 
Pilgrims,  6,  8. 
Pine  Tree  Shillings,  51-52. 
Pioneer,  240. 
Piracy,  178-179. 

Plymouth,  Mass.,  6,  8,  50,  52,  59. 
Point  Adams,  167. 
Point  Shirley,  115. 
Pope,  Alexander,  72. 
Pormort,  Philemon,  35. 
Port  Bill,  107-108. 
Post  Office,  366. 
Pownall,  Thomas,  86,  88. 
Prescott,  William  Hicklirig,  234,  235,  247, 

259.  273. 


Preston,  Thomas,  96. 

Prince,  Thomas,  72,  326. 

Privy  Council,  27,  28. 

Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table,  ^.yj. 

Province  House,  123. 

Provincial  Boston,  54-86. 

Provincial  Congress,  Massachusetts,  iii. 

Provoost,  Samuel,  195. 

Public  Garden,  351,  356. 

Public  Library,  232,  304,  326-335. 

Quakers,  39,  41-42. 

Quincy,  Edmund,  126,  241,  270-271,  300. 

Quincy,   Josiah,  Jr.    (patriot),  96,   102, 

106,  298. 
Quincy,  Josiah  (ist  Mayor  Q.),  155,  250, 

298-302,  346;  Life  of,  126,  300. 
Quincy,  Josiah  (2d  Mayor  Q.),  208,  310, 

329- 
Quincy,  Josiah  (3d  Mayor  Q.),  295. 
Quincy,  Mass.,  10,  131. 

Railroad  Celebration,  310,  313. 
Randolph,  Edward,  53,  55,  58. 
Tlegulation  Acts,  108. 
Re?narks  on  Dr.  Ware's  Answer,  202. 
Reply  to  Dr.  Ware's  Letters,  202. 
Revere  House,  273. 
Revere,  Paul,  107,  iii,  112,  126,  158. 
Revolutionary  Boston,  87-122. 
Rhode  Island,  23,  40,  50,  52. 
Rhodes,  James  Ford,  280,  286,  296. 
Ripley,  George,  227,  229. 
Robinson,  John,  90. 

Robinson,  William  Stevens  ("  Warring- 
ton"), 290. 
Rogers,  Henry  Darwin,  335, 
Rogers,  William  Barton,  332,  335-338. 
Rose,  frigate,  53. 
Rowe  Place,  337. 
Roxbury,  Mass.,  38,  363. 
Royal  Exchange,  London,  83. 
Ruggles,  Timothy,  102. 
Rule,  Margaret,  43. 
Russell,  Thomas,  172. 

Saint  Gaudens,  Augustus,  295. 
St.  Jago,  163. 

Salem,  Mass.,  8,  42,  62,  108,  179,  194. 
Salem  East  India  Society,  309. 


39^ 


INDEX 


Saltonstall,  Sir  Richard,  6,  12. 

"Sam  Adams  Regiments,"  94-96. 

Sanborn,  Franklin  Benjamin,  284-285. 

Sanitary  Commission,  290,  370. 

Sargent,  Lucius  Manlius,  71. 

Saturday  Club,  238,  244-246. 

Saugus,  Mass.,  173. 

School  for  Scandal,  134. 

Scott,  Sir  Walter,  233,  329. 

Scribner's  Monthly,  173. 

Scudder,  Horace  Elisha,  239. 

Sculpture,  Painting  and,  345-346. 

Seabury,  Samuel,  195. 

Seamen's  Bethel,  309. 

Selfridge,  Thomas  Oliver,  147. 

Separatists,  6. 

Sewall,  Judge  Samuel,  12,  42,  53,  65-67, 
209. 

Shadrach,  274. 

Sha7inon,  ship,  150. 

Shattuck,  Samuel,  41. 

Shaw,  Lemuel,  205. 

Shaw,  Robert  Gould,  292-296. 

Shaw,  Samuel,  163. 

Shaw  Monument,  295-296. 

Shawm ut,  9. 

Sherman,  Mrs.,  25. 

Shirley,  William,  79,  80,  84-86. 

Short,  Mercy,  43. 

Shute,  Samuel,  69. 

Silliman,  Benjamin,  316-317. 

Sims,  Thomas,  274-275,  277. 

Sirius,  steamer,  181. 

Sixth  Mass.  Regiment,  288. 

Slave  and   the  Union,  The,  250- 

296. 
Small-pox,  64,  115,  141-142. 
Snelling,  George  Henry,  358-359. 
South  Boston,  118,  153,  322,  363. 
Sparks,  Jared,  201,  273. 
Stamp  Act,  99,  loi. 
State  Board  of  Education,  318. 
State  House,  152. 
Stevenson,  Marmaduke,  41. 
Stillman,  William  James,  237. 
"  Stone  Chapel."     See  King's  Chapel. 
Story,  Joseph,  28,  300. 
Story,  William  Wetmore,  228. 
Stowe,  Harriet  Beecher,  205,  210,  219. 
Street,  Ann,  250. 


Street,  Arch,  138. 

Arlington,  356,  360. 

Beacon,  33,  234,  352. 

Berkeley,  360. 

Boylston,  99,  158,  332,  360. 

Brattle,  42. 

Charles,  352. 

Chestnut,  340. 

Dover,  38,  153,  351. 

Federal,  135. 

Franklin,  138. 

Hawley,  133. 

Kilby,  145. 

Kingstoji,  364. 

Marlborough,  129. 

Mason,  330,  332. 

Milk,  93,  366. 

Newbury,  129. 

Orange,  129. 

Park,  158. 

Pearl,  140,  322,  366. 

Pinckney,  33. 

Purchase,  227. 

Salem,  80, 

Spruce,  33. 

State,  93,  145,  147,  279,  285. 

Summer,  337,  364,  366. 

Tremont,  88,  158, 

W^ashington,  38,  129,  263,  366. 

Winter,  148. 

Strong,  Caleb,  148. 

Strong,  Fort,  150. 

Stuart,  Gilbert,  140,  345, 

Stuart,  Moses,  202. 

Sturgis,  Julian,  231. 

Sturgis,  Russell,  231. 

Sturgis,  William,  171,  178. 

Suffolk  Resolves,  iii. 

Sullivan,  James,  134,  146,  147,  149. 

Sumner,  Charles,  233,  257,  273,  275, 

296,  359- 
Symphony  Orchestra,  Boston,  344. 

Talbot,  ship,  6. 

Taylor,  Edward  Thompson,  226,  309. 

Tea  Party,  Boston,  98,  105-107,  153. 

Tdnnyson,  Alfred,  5. 

Thacher,  Oxenbridge,  88. 

Thacher,  Peter,  71. 

Thayer,  Ephraim,  158. 


\p 


286 


INDEX 


397 


Thayer,  James  Bradley,  291. 

Thompson,  George,  263. 

Thursday  Lectures,  13,  44. 

Ticknor,  George,  231-234,  236,  259,  273, 

332. 
Tontine  Crescent,  138. 
Town  House,  121. 
Town  Meeting,  91,  93,  94,  loi,  103,  106, 

108,  124,  154. 
Townshend  Revenue  Bill,  103. 
Trade  and  Commerce.     See  THE  HUB 

AND  THE  Wheel, 
Transcendentalism,  226-229. 
Transcript,  Boston  Evening,  358,  360. 
Tremont  Temple,  284. 
Trimountaine,  9,  10,  38. 
Trotter,  Captain  (R.  N.),  179. 
Tudor,  Frederic,  173,  175,  183. 
Tudor,  William,  136. 
Tufts  College,  363. 
Tyler,  John,  308. 

Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,  273. 
Underwood,  Francis  Henry,  241. 
Unicorn,  ship,  183. 

Unilr.rian  Movement.     See  "  THE  BOS- 
TON Religion." 
"  United  Colonies  of  New  England,"  36. 
University  of  Virginia,  335. 
Usher,  Hezekiah,  47. 
Ursuline  Convent,  260. 

Vancouver's  journal,  167. 

Vane,  Sir  Henry,  19-20. 

Vattemare,  Alexandre,  329-330. 

Venice  Preserved,  Otway's,  133, 

"Vigilance  Committee,"  277. 

Vincent,     Mrs.     (Mary    Ann    Farley), 

340. 
Voltaire,  239. 

Walker,  Francis  Amasa,  338. 
Walker,  James,  234,  259. 
Walker,  William  Johnson,  337. 
Ward,  Edward,  73. 
Ward,  Nathaniel,  13,  34. 


Ware,  Henry,  196,  199,  202. 

Warren,  John  Collins,  324-325. 

Warren,  Joseph,  102. 

Warren,  William,  340. 

"  Warrington"  (W.  S.  Robinson),  290. 

Washington,  George,  113,  118,  121,  126, 

130,  140,  302. 
Washington,  Martha,  140. 
Washington,  ship,  163-168. 
Water  and  Fire,  350-371. 
Waterliouse,  Benjamin,  141. 
Waterston,  Robert  Cassie,  304. 
Water-Power  Company,  Boston,  353, 356, 

360. 
Watts,  Isaac,  72,  195. 
Webster,  Daniel,  259,  273,  286,  302,  304- 

305.  307.  308,  320. 
Wells,  Horace,  324. 
Wendell,  Barrett,  62,  206, 
Wesleyan  Academy,  Wilbraham,  363. 
West  Roxbury,  Mass.,  215,  363. 
Western  Avenue,  358. 
Whalley,  regicide,  52. 
Wheelwright,  John,  19-24. 
Whipple,  Edwin  Percy,  233,  241,  246. 
Whitefield,  George,  70,  74-79. 
Whittier,  John  Greenleaf,  233,  241,  244, 

247,  267,  273,  283. 
Wilbraham,  Mass,  363. 
Willard,  Samuel,  63. 
Willard,  Solomon,  308. 
William  of  Orange,  and  Mary,  57. 
Williams,  Roger,  33,  39-40,  190. 
Williams  College,  363. 
Willis,  Nathaniel  Parkei",  248. 
Wilson,  Henry,  250. 
Wilson,  John,  6,  18,  20,  23,  41. 
Winthrop,  John,  3-11,  18-20,  27,  28,  31- 

37.  47.  54- 
Winthrop,  Robert  Charles,  286,  364. 
Witchcraft,  42-43,  62. 
Wonder-  Working  Providence,  37. 
Woods,  Leonard,  202. 
"  Writs  of  Assistance,"  88,  89. 

Zara,  117. 


\ici-  \^ 


\'0 


3388    0-58 


